


Dwarven Drabbles

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2018-12-22 13:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 44
Words: 48,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11967978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: A collection of snippets, prompt-fills, and other short works that I've posted on Tumblr and am now assembling in an easy-to-find format.





	1. Spoiler Alert (Fundin&Halldora Library!AU, Modern!AU)

It went against all of her training. It went against the deepest regulations of her morality. _Protect patron privacy._

“I don’t care what they say, I don’t think Jon Snow is dead.”

The words were out before she could stop herself. And they escaped into the air despite her valiant efforts to hold them in via clamping her hand over her mouth.

If he’d asked it would have been a different thing entirely. If he’d said, “Hey, so, what do you think about Jon Snow?” Or even, “Give me all your spoilers,” it would have been alright. Not just forgivable, but commendable. Engaging the patrons in discussions about their check-outs was more than alright if they initiated the conversation. But that wasn’t what happened.

It was because she hadn’t signed him up for the library card. Dora was sure of it, if she’d been able to talk to him and ask him all kinds of personal questions, “Where do you live? What’s your number? Do you have an email address you’d like your notifications sent to?” And it wouldn’t be strange because she had to ask those questions as part of her job.

But Harry had gotten him. It was unfair on two levels. Level One - Harry hated making library cards because it involved using the computer and Harry hated using the computer. Level Two - He was oblivious to the fact that six-and-a-half feet of sex was standing in front of him, shuffling his feet and stumbling through the answers to the rote questions a little hesitatingly.

“Have you got DVDs?” he asked, once he was handed his newly minted card.

“Of course,” Harry sneered under his breath. Sex cocked his head, not having heard, but then Harry said more loudly, “Of course! Along the wall in the back of adult fiction.”

“Oh,” Sex said, scratching the back of his head. “Erm. I’ve never been here - well, I haven’t been since I was little, could you - ”

Damn her short legs! Damn Harry! Damn him and his insistence upon customer service, for walking Sex to the back of the building with a crooked finger and a muttered, “Come with me.”

If Dora had been allowed to talk to him - alright, alright, to stare at him, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. With him, holding the first three series of Game of Thrones in his meaty hand (seriously, they were huge boxes, it shouldn’t be possible), staring at her with a furrowed brow and slightly open mouth. Damn, he was gorgeous. Damn, he was annoyed.

“Sorry!” she squeaked behind her hands. “Sorry! Er…you’ve read the books, haven’t you?”

What a crushing, terrible mistake. They were meant to serve the needs of all patrons and it sounded elitist and horrible to just assume people read the books before they consumed any media based on a novel. There was no reason why he should have read the books, except it would have saved her from (a tiny bit) of embarrassment. But he shook his head, then, amazingly smiled.

“Not much of a reader, but I heard this was good - everyone at work’s talked about it and I thought I might as well. Figured it was all blood and tits, but I guess the story’s good.”

Then it was his turn to look mortified. What Sex (alright, alright, his name was Fred, according to his record, not Frederick, just Fred, like some friend of her Dad’s), what Fred didn’t know was that it was actually much more acceptable for a patron to say ‘tits’ to a librarian than for a librarian to comment on what they were checking out. But he clapped his free hand over his mouth, mirroring her own horror and squeaked, “Sorry!”

Well, when she said it, it had been a squeak. He sounded more like a foghorn. Harry turned from shelving and glared at both of them. Ah, she’d already broken all the most important rules - why not go three for three?

Leaning across the desk (in a way she often didn’t because, as a short person with large breasts, leaning against any kind of counter usually just meant that all conversation was directed downward), she whispered, “If it’s blood and tits you’re looking for, I recommend the Spartacus series - it’s basically porn, but it’s historical porn.”

Fred laughed and she laughed and then he noticed her boobs and she immediately took them off the counter because _what was she thinking?_ Then Fred coughed and she pushed her glasses up her nose and they both stood there until Dora belatedly remembered that she needed to give him his slip with his due dates.

“Here you are,” she said, sliding the paper across the desk. “Twenty-one days.”

“Right,” he said. Fred made a motion to put the paper in his pocket, then fumbled it. He crouched down to pick it up, smiling in a chagrined way. “Clumsy.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” Dora waved her hand dismissively. “Sorry, though. About spoiling things for you. Er. It’s still good. Though. Well, it’s different from the series and, actually, some things are terrible - like, the level of violence sustained in the series is unrealistic, but it’s fantasy, so I’d give it a pass, only it seems more gratuitous to actually see it and it isn’t as though the show is nuanced in the way fiction can be - not that television can’t be nuanced, but there’s a way of depicting violence as a way of demonstrating how terrible violence is, but if you’re not consciously trying to be critical, then it just looks like blood for blood’s sake, which I don’t really care for, but I know that most people watching the show are watching for the violence and not so much for the social commentary. If the author himself intends social commentary, which is also a matter of some debate.”

A matter of some debate. Oh, _why_ had he chosen to come in at a time when her better judgment had utterly deserted her. She’d probably scared him off. He’d never be back. And worse, he’d never return the show.

“Well, I’ll watch and see,” he said finally, having paused to see if she was done or just taking a breath. He was still smiling at her, but Dora assumed it was because you were supposed to smile at the insane, act with all benign courtesy and get away as quickly as possible. She’d done it herself with their pushier patrons. “Thanks for the…er…thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Dora replied automatically. “Have a good afternoon.”

“You too,” he said. She stared at his back (well, it was broad enough that she was concerned about him getting through the doors, she just wanted to be vigilant about patron safety and building maintenance), then her eyes dropped to the counter and she saw he’d left his slip.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in time to watch him hurry down the front steps. The door swung closed as she picked up the slip and shouted, unheard, “You forgot your - ”

Oh. Oh. OH. That was unexpected.

Scrawled on the back was his phone number. She knew it was. She checked it against the number written in the record, just to be sure.


	2. Wilde Afternoon (Haldr&Thorin Library!AU, Modern!AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: Thorin & Haldr + “This lil’ shit is the only person who knows more about Oscar Wilde than I do, I give up.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I thought it was only okay.”

Shit. Shit. Merde, even, for all the good it would do him. And it wouldn’t do any. Wait! Wilde died in France. But he probably knew that.

“You don’t even work here,” Harry growled. The little punk (yes, Harry was vertically unimpressive and  _yes_ his nephew’s friend Tommy was almost as absurdly tall as his nephew himself, but he would always be a little punk, they  _all_  would be) actually had the nerve to look guileless, smiled and everything while Mrs. Genevese and her son Will looked between them like they were watching the tennis match between Serena Williams and what’s-her-name.

Who knew that Harry would have something in common with a ladies’ tennis phenomenon? Who knew it would be a crushing loss against a less-worthy foe?

“I haven’t seen it,” he gritted out from the back of his throat. Hadn’t seen it because he was a purist. Hadn’t seen it because he thought Fry would be too cutesy for the part, to ironic, too much a caricature to be taken seriously. And Jude Law? Hardly worth mentioning. But the point was, he hadn’t seen it. And little Tommy had. And he’d lost.

“Well,” Mrs. Genevese broke up the awkward silence. “That was…really interesting. We’d better get reading!” And she waved Wilde’s Collected Short Stories at them like it was a fly swatter before escaping, son in tow, to check out.

It started innocently enough, Will needed to read “The Birth of the Infanta” and was having trouble tracking it down. The catalogue was useless and Harry wouldn’t let them leave for - horror of horrors - the  _bookstore_ because he swore he could find it if he tried. Tommy had been lurking in the teen section and it was with his arms laden with the works of Andrew Smith (disgustingly overrated) that he suggested they try Google.

“I think all his stuff’s out of copyright, so you can just read it online,” he said. “It was how I got through  _Dorian Gray_ , I actually kind of hated it, so I read it in bed and just kept falling asleep. Kind of convenient. Actually.”

“That sounds - “  Will began, but Harry wouldn’t let him finish.

“We’re going to the 800s,” he said, jerking his head and indicating that the Genveses should follow - unfortunately, Tommy thought the jerk included him too and he trotted along, expounding on his love for Oscar Wilde and the various screen adaptations of his work. 

“I’m a big fan of the Rupert Everett and Colin Firth  _Earnest_ , I thought it was hilarious, especially the song, that was great - ”

“It was based on Wilde’s own poetry,” Harry interrupted, not about to be stood up by a child.

“Mmm-hmm,” Tommy agreed, as if he was just explaining and not  _winning_. “Yeah, that was cool. Anyway, it was really good, if you like his short stuff - well, he wrote that for his sons, it’s kind of little-kidish, but his plays are hilarious, you should check those out  - ”

“Wasn’t he gay?” Will asked as Harry cursed his way through the literature section. Quietly. He was at work, after all.

“Yeah, but he was married,” Tom said. “I mean, they didn’t really think in terms of ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ back then, his wife’s name was Constance - he was definitely, y’know, attracted to men, but they had two kids - ”

“Vyvyan and Cyril,” Harry added, angrily reshelving Faulkner. 

“Yeah, two kids - there’s actually a book about here too, there’s a ton of stuff about Wilde, of course, but she was really interesting and there’s a biography of her somewhere around here - ”

“You’ll find it shelved under B MOY,” Harry clarified. “ _Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde_ , the author’s last name is Moyle. Aha! Got you, you bastard!”

“Oh. Uh. Thanks,” Will said as Harry thrust the book at his mother. To Tommy he added, “We’re watching a movie about him in class. That guy is in it. From the new Sherlock Holmes movies - not the show, the movies.”

And that was how they’d wound up where they were, faced off in the darkest recesses of the short story collections. Harry still considered it a face-off, at least. Tommy just looked young and tall and eager to please. 

“City of birth?” Harry barked at him.

“Um. Dublin?” It took Tommy a minute to catch on. “Ooh, what’s his middle name?”

“Ha,” Harry intoned without a trace of humor. “Fingal O’Flahertie Wills. What did he read at Trinity?”

That seemed to stump Tommy for a moment until his face lit up and he said, “Classics! Ooh, okay, so, he had a girlfriend in Ireland who went on to marry some other famous author - who was it?”

“Bram Stoker,” Harry shot back immediately. Then, seeing the chance to turn the tables, asked, “what was her name?”

“Florence,” Tommy said, after thinking about it for a minute. “Okay, okay, this is tricky - whose petition did Wilde sign to free the Haymarket rioters?”

What?

“What?” Harry asked, parsing the question in his head. What petition?

“I’ll give you a hint,” Tommy offered generously. “It was another writer.”

Harry guessed, “Welles?” It was a fantastic guess. It was also wrong.

“George Bernard Shaw!” Tommy pumped his fist in the air in triumph, then remembered he was in a library and immediately looked embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Harumph,” Harry snorted. “That’s right. Out! Terrible behavior. Next time you show your face in here, I’ll have the law on you!”

“Okay,” Tommy grinned. “See you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Harry nodded. “I’ll quiz you on Keats, you little know-it-all! You won’t stand a chance!”


	3. Censorship (Bombur/Thyra Library!AU, Modern!AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr Prompt: Thyra/Bombur or Vili/Dis - “I saw you dumping a Twilight book into the trash and I’m smitten.”

“What - Oh my freaking God!”

It was the third time he’d heard the shriek in fifteen minutes. The first time, he ran out from the kitchen, worried that a little kid had stabbed themself with a drink stirrer (weirdly, not the first time it had happened). The second time, he poked his head out, wondering whether or not he should ask her to shush, but the cafe was pretty much deserted, with the exception of the cute blonde in the booth by herself. So he let it go.

“WHAT THE HELL?”

Then, a huge thud. Brian stuck his head out the door, about to inquire (finally) whether everything was alright, but the cute blonde girl was leaving in a huff. He followed her, out of curiosity more than concern. She’d clearly thrown something away, he’d just taken out the trash, which explained the heavy thud in the container. For a second, he was annoyed that she’d tossed her plate in there (a plate he’d have to dive after and wash and disinfect because ew, trash!plate), but her cutlery, coffee cup, and plate were neatly stacked in their designated location. Instead, what was in the trash was a black book with a familiar apple on the cover.

Okay. Okay, technically, people shouldn’t be tossing books in the trash - they were the handy-dandy library cafe, after all. But he really couldn’t be too mad that she decided to junk that particular book. 

Still, rules were rules, so he chased her out the door exclaiming, “Hey, hold on!”

“He just showed up at her house!” she continued what had clearly been an onging rant. “Like, ‘Oh, hey, yeah, broke in and watching you freaking sleeping! Whatever! Hug?’ EW!”

Brian stared a minute - no, seriously, she was SO cute. Blonde hair in some kind of weird looking side-braid that was nice on her, round pink cheeks, very red lips…chubby and so, so, attractive. But he was supposed to be yelling at her.

“Uh. You can’t throw away library books,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder since there was no way he was fishing it out of coffee grounds.

“What?” she asked, confused. “Oh! Oh, it’s not a library book, it’s my sister’s, she’s  _ten_  and she’s not reading it. I am freaking censoring her until she’s old enough to know that you don’t freaking stalk people. Or, like, okay, sometimes people get stalked, but it is BAD and BAD people stalk other people. The good guys don’t stalk. Good guys are like, ‘Oh, hey, want to see a movie?’ no, ‘Oh, your scent is making me want to eat you and also freaking STALK you.”

It seemed to Brian that she was waiting for a reply. “Uh. Yeah. Right on. Stalking is super bad.”

“RIGHT?” She let out a frustrated grunt, blowing her hair out of her face where it had escaped its braid. “But, no, sorry, not a library book. Just a gross book that she probably got from a friend. A bad friend. Who now has weird relationship ideas. Okay, I mean, I didn’t read them when they came out and I thought, ‘Hey, are people just hating on things girls like?’ But no, they’re actually really awful. And I get that because I’m, you know, practically an adult. But she’s a child and this is wrong.”

“Yeah, I didn’t read them,” Brian replied. “The movies are on TV a lot, but I haven’t actually watched them. My brother hate-watches them and screams at the television, but I don’t see the point.”

“Oh, because there isn’t one,” she agreed. “Like, I was reading it to see if it was okay for her and it’s not. And then I stopped because it was so bad I was getting kind of loud - um. Sorry. I’m kind of…loud sometimes. I’m the oldest of six, I have to be.”

“Whoa,” Brian replied since six kids was a lot to have and not have a TV show. “Yeah, I just have a brother, he’s plenty.”

“I have four brothers,” she rolled her eyes. “They’re adorable. Mya is a problem. She’s convinced she’s, like, nineteen? And she’s very not. I am nineteen and I try to tell her, ‘Hey, don’t wear make-up, you’re little!’ or ‘Hey, go play in dirt, you’re little!’ and she’s just such a bitch. Like, I love her, but she’s a bitch, ‘Well, I don’t want to be you, you’re boring,’ and I’m not boring, I’m awesome.”

Brian just nodded; indeed, she seemed awesome. And chatty, which he wasn’t, but it took all sorts to make the world go around.

“Sorry, I talk a lot,” she said. “Anyway, sorry to drag you out of work, but it’s okay, no need to call the library cops.”

“Actually, I am the library cops,” he said, surprising himself. “I’m just undercover as the sandwich guy. Brian the Sandwich Guy”

She laughed and stuck her hand out, “Tara. Nice to meet you. If you’re in disguise, does that mean you aren’t ginger? Because I love gingers.”

Brian grinned and tugged at his hair. “Nah, it’s totally real - I’m just undercover, not in disguise. I don’t have my curly mustache or sweet shades.”

“Cool,” she laughed, then cocked her head tot he side and said, “What do you do when you’re not undercover?”

“Well,” he smiled. “Sometimes I go to the movies.”


	4. Dwarven Daycare (Fundin Family Kid!Fic)

t would be an exaggeration to say that Dwalin Fundinul’s arrival at the child minder’s was met with anxiety on the parts of the minder, but there certainly were a lot of stories that circulated, among those who had been employed when Dwalin’s elder brother Balin was young enough for minding

  
“Oh, I remember the first few days his father brought him - poor lad,” Iarpa recollected. “Cried and cried - but he grew used to it eventually.”  
  
“Do you remember the time Balin bit poor Jori when he wanted to cuddle his bear?” Halfdan asked as sleeping mats were being stacked and rolled into the corner to prepare for the next arrival of sleepy dwarflings. “Didn’t drawn blood, but s'hands, you could hear the screams clear across the Misty Mountains! Balin’s  _and_  Jori’s!”  
  
Of course, Balin had grown up to be a lovely lad. He accompanied his mother to drop his little brother off, smiling and saying, “Good morning, Mistress, how are you, Master?” like the polite little boy that he became once he started his schooling. Dwalin was balanced on his mother’s hip, his head on her shoulder; the notorious bear of memory was dangling from one chubby hand.   
  
“Come on sweetling, up you wake,” Halldóra coaxed, jostling him a bit. She smiled apologetically at Iarpa. “He’s a wee bit slow to rise, should have a nice, long nap later - ”   
  
“No! No!” Dwalin startled awake to shout insistently. Dóra kissed his forehead and sighed.  
  
“ _That_  is not his favorite word,” she informed Iarpa. “He doesn’t talk much, I’m afraid, but he’s more than capable of making himself understood.”  
  
“I’m sure,” Iarpa smiled and reached to take Dwalin from his mother. Surprisingly (to the dwarves who’d gathered round to keep an eye on this initial encounter), he went with nary a peep, letting himself be handed over and keeping a firm grip on his bear. “Alright, Dwalin, let’s get you settled. Say good bye to your amad and nadad.”  
  
“Bye Dwalin,” Balin waved at him from his place beside his mother. “It’s not so bad in there, I promise.”  
  
Halldóra leaned over to give him another kiss before reaching to take Balin by the hand as they continued on their way. “I’ll see you in a few hours, sweetling - ”  
  
“Ama!” Balin growled. “Stop! You don’t have to hold my hand.”  
  
Iarpa and Halfdan exchanged amused smiles; some things never changed.  
  
“I won’t have you run over by a trolley,” Halldóra remarked as they walked away, firmly grasping Balin’s hand in her own.   
  
“But I always look to see if they’re coming!”  
  
All the while Dwalin stayed quiet, but he waved his free hand at his mother and brother’s retreating backs. Then he looked at Iarpa as if to ask, _What’s next?_  
  
There were a scant few dwarflings about, children of the Guard and nobility who had obligations at Court. Iarpa always made a point of greeting the children when they came, so she handed Dwalin off to Halfdan to take into the interior chambers, where they kept the majority of the toys. 

He was a very big lad, for his age. Only a little older than Balin had been when he started coming, just ten years old, but he was bigger than one of the smaller fifteen-year-olds in their charge. Tall, fat, and broad; may the Maker have pity on them if he turned out to be a biter.   
  
He was being very quiet, Halfdan reflected as he placed Dwalin on the floor. The lad surveyed the room and rubbed his eyes; perhaps he was still sleepy? But then it was if a spark had been lit - he spied the slide, carved of smooth stone, like a chute in the forges and ran toward it, giggling in happy anticipated. Well. It looked as if there would be no repetition of Balin’s tears.

Halfdan kept an eye on him. Dwalin climbed up expertly, then pushed his bear down before him. He then settled himself on the edge of the slide and took off toward the bottom. When he made it, he squealed happily, then clapped for himself - turning toward Halfdan as if he expected the minder to clap as well.  
  
It was far from the strangest thing a child expected and Halfdan was happy to indulge him. “Well done, Dwalin!” he said, applauding politely. “Do you want to try it - ?”  
  
But there was no point in asking for Dwalin, having retrieved the bear from where it had fallen, raced back to the slide, prepared to go again.   
  
And again. And again. More children arrived and as Dwalin prepared to climb up and go back down a fifth time, a little girl named Ardís trotted up, smiling brightly. “My turn?” she asked.  
  
_Here it comes,_  Halfdan was ready to move forward, to intervene, to remind Dwalin that one must keep one hands to oneself when not engaged in combat, but there was no need. Dwalin just smiled, hugged his bear and waited his turn patiently, even clapping for Ardís when she successfully made it to the bottom.   
  
“You go, your turn! What is your name?” she asked as Dwalin started climbing the stairs leading to the slide.  
  
“His name is Dwalin,” Halfdan supplied.  
  
“Oh. Dwalin! Yay, Dwalin!” Ardís clapped for him as he went down the slide. It seemed that Dwalin enjoyed clapping more than he enjoyed being clapped for, since he joined in the applause and Halfdan, finding the scene rather adorable, clapped right along with them. 

Of course, there were other children to look after and Halfdan was busy soothing nervous newcomers and welcoming back the usual hoarde. Different children came at different times of the day and night - the Mountain never slept and often both parents and other relations were too busy to look after their littlest children. It was no matter, child-rearing and craft were of equal value, there was nothing unusual about dwarves requiring additional support to look after their dwarflings. Nearly all the Guilds required that child-minding be provided for. And for those dwarves who were not members of a particular Guild (few and far between, but nobles occasionally fell between the cracks) they were willing to provide handsomely for the service.

The place was a-buzz within a quarter of an hour. Dwarves of the Court had to set their schedules by Mannish hours and the tiniest Lords and Ladies were toppling over one another, crawling, toddling, and running around in a controlled kind of chaos. Dwalin was nearly lost in the shuffle, until Halfdan heard a little boy inquire, “May I see your bear, please?”  
  
He whipped around, but needn’t have been concerned. Dwalin nodded agreeably and handed the bear over to be perused at once.   
  
“Are we sure he’s Balin’s brother?” Halfdan asked Iarpa when they had a moment to speak. She laughed.  
  
“I’ve seen dozens of brothers and sisters and the rest come through here,” she smiled. “Temperaments different as coal and diamonds. But still wrought of the same rock.”  
  
When the mats, blankets, and pillows were laid out later, however, Dwalin seemed about ready to prove his relationship with his brother was genuine. He’d managed to get his bear back and hugged him tight to his chest.  
  
“Come along, Dwalin,” Halfdan said, holding out a hand and hoping he’d be as agreeable as he had been the rest of the morning. “Naptime.”  
  
Dwalin screwed up his face and shook his head. “NO NA - DA!”  
  
Fundin had let himself in, stepping over the gate and wandering into the midst of them, looking enormous and imposing amongst all the little ones. He was dressed in armor and mail, his axes strapped to his back, terribly fierce, but Dwalin ran right up to him, arms outstretched.   
  
“Hold me, Da!” he implored and Fundin acquiesced, settling the lad against his chest. “Kisses!”  
  
This was evidently meant for the bear, not for Dwalin for the child held the toy up and Fundin gave it an obliging kiss.   
  
Iarpa smiled up at him, “Before your time, aren’t you?”  
  
“I thought I’d check up on him,” Fundin said. “A friend owed me a favor…anyhow, how was he?”  
  
“Good as gold,” Halfdan said. “Not very enthusiastic about naps, but - ”  
  
“Ah!” Fundin held up a hand. “Just the word…I don’t remember Balin being so down on sleeping.”   
  
“Well, we’ll try - sometime,” Iarpa said. “I take it you’ll be taking him home.”  
  
Fundin actually looked guilty. “Well…just for today. I’ve got a free afternoon, after all. Er. Thanks. Say good-bye, Dwalin.”  
  
The dwarfling smiled and waved over his father’s shoulder as Fundin carried him out. Iarpa shook her head, “Some things never change.”


	5. The Menagerie (Thror&Disa Cultural Misunderstandings)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr Prompt: Thror&Disa: The Queen causing confusion for some Human guests, who have different ideas of ho a queen (or a woman in general) should be like.

If they’d suspected any disrespect was meant, doubtless relations between Dale and Erebor would cool considerably. 

As it was, the dwarves of Erebor chose not to notice that a greater profusion of noble lords (and a few ladies) chose to make the regular trek to the Mountain’s throneroom for meetings with the King Under the Mountain. If any did chance to notice, they assumed that those assembled had come to see Thrór, who had only assumed power five years previous. He was different from King Dáin, that was certain, in temperament, if not in mein. Where his father received his guests seated, Thrór often stood and took their hands, after they had exchanged courtly bows. He had an incredible knack for remembering names and family relations and often inquired after wives, parents, and children of those who attended on him.  It endeared him to the honored citizens of Dale (and made them more likely to forgive those lapses of knowledge that were unfortunately the byproduct of a king who came to the throne unexpectedly after letting his education in matters of law and trade fall by the wayside). 

It was expected that they would want to get a good look at this new king, a king, who it was said among Men, had slayed a dragon. Though Men were not permitted to venture deep enough into the Mountain to survey the game room, at Thrór’s request, thirty Guardsmen carried the head of the beast into the Hall of the Kings (hung with tapestries between which stood golden statues to the Mountain’s former rulers), the only room near the mouth of the Mountain large enough to contain it. On that day, no fewer than five-hundred Men and Women made the journey up the hill from the valley where Dale stood to the Mountain home of the dwarves. Vari, keeper of the treasury, joked that they ought to have charged admission.  
  
But Thrór deliberately opened the doors wide (though a great portion of the Mountain Guard were posted not inconspicuously by the doors to halls and antechambers that they did not want their visitors to venture into) and personally accompanied Gir, Lord of Dale, about himself.  
  
“Remarkable,” the Man said, staring up at the bleached bone skull that time and rough treatment had stripped of scales and sinew. “Remarkable. How many fought upon that day?”  
  
“Near three-hundred, as I recall,” Thrór replied. “The greater number were our own Guard, the beast had laid the land to waste by the time we got there, poor bastards.”  
  
Gir chose to overlook the term and only nodded, steering clear from the mouth of the beast, as though its great jaws might suddenly come to life and snap at him. “A fire-breather?”  
  
Thrór cocked his head at him curiously - surely not a fire-breather, the shape of the jaw was all wrong - but rather than take the Man to task for his ignorance, he shook his head and said, “Nay, but a nasty bugger all the same - his slobbering burnt like acid, many a good warrior lost eyes that day, and fingers.”  
  
Thrór shuddered at the last and Gir seemed not to notice, fascinated as he was by the size of the thing, the great staring eyes. “Remarkable. And it was your hand that slayed it?”  
  
“Me?” Thrór laughed. “No, where’d you hear that? Nah, I only cleaved the head from the body to carry it home as a bounty. The slayer was my wife.”  
  
“Your…” Gir was certain he must have misheard, but before he could ask for clarification, Thrór whistled and beckoned another dwarf to his side.  
  
It was a warrior, nearly five-and-a-half feet tall, which was a staggering height for one of their kind. This particular warrior Gir had noticed upon arriving and had given nearly as wide a berth as the one he gave the dragon. The dwarf was enormously heavy through the shoulders, arms, and chest with long legs and thighs as thick around as his own waist. Armor-clad as the warrior was, Gir could tell that none of that bulk was the result of padding under the armor and he began wracking his mind, wondering if he’d caused some offense.  
  
“Dísa, this is Gir, Lord of Dale,” Thrór said easily enough, in such a light tone that Gir did not think that the sentence would end with,  _now run him through_ , but he was so nervous that he almost missed his own introduction, “Gir, this is Sigdís, my wife. Master Huntress, Queen Under the Mountain, and Dragonslayer.”  
  
The dwarf grunted in acknowledgement and Gir blinked. Wife?  _Queen?_  
   
“You forgot one,” the queen said to Thrór, removing her helm and smirking. The face bore a few scars over sun-browned skin, the hair was simply braided - less elaborately even than Thrór’s - and there were tattoos on the brow and chin, disappearing under the neck of the armor.   
  
_Wife?_  
  
“Oh!” Thrór snapped his fingers and smiled, “Captain of the Mountain Guard, keeper of hearth and home and all that - speaking of, where’s the baby got to?”  
  
Sigdís rolled her eyes, “About somewhere, can’t hardly bring him into a room before the Guard’s come running, got to dueling over who’s going to hold him first, I let them fight it out in the armory, likely he’s still there.”  
  
Thrór nodded cheerfully, as if was perfectly natural that the mother of his heir would have only the slightest idea of where there son was, as if it wasn’t a given that the babe would be with a capable nursemaid, or perhaps ensconced in a cot in his mother’s apartments while she entertained the ladies of the court or applied herself to needlework.   
  
The wife, apparently endeavoring to be civil, nodded at the great dragon’s skull and said, “Not a bad haul, eh?”  
  
Gir had quite forgotten the dragon, startled as he was by the dwarf. “Erm. Yes.”  
  
“Got him right through the heart,” Thrór boasting, eyes shining with love and admiration. “Good clean shot from a longbow, she pulled it herself,” here he mimed drawing an enormous bowstring and made a sound with his mouth that indicated swift flight, “pfft - straight through to the heart.”  
  
“We ought to have taken that as well,” Sigdís lamented, “but the head and the coat were enough.”  
  
“Would’ve stunk to the stars,” Thrór remarked patiently, as if this was an argument they’d had before. “Such a long journey  _and_  in summertime. Couldn’t be done.”  
  
Sigdís shrugged, then pursed her lips, thinking. “Well, if I ever have the chance to slay an oliphaunt, I’m dragging the lot back for stuffing.”  
  
“‘Course you will,” Thrór agreed. “And gift me the ivory as a present, I hope?”  
  
“Aye, aye, if you don’t needle me about it,” she smiled, despite her tone of annoyance.   
  
Gir just looked at the two of them. He had been Lord of Dale for ten years before King Dáin fell. He fancied he knew quite a bit about dwarves, their ways, their speech, their habits. Only now did he consider that he knew nothing at all.  
  
“I thought…” Gir said slowly, cautiously, “that, er, dwarrowdams rarely left their homes?”  
  
Both Sigdís and Thrór looked at him, then exchanged a glance with each other. It did not take an expert in dwarven custom to read the expression; in that moment, they’d both decided he was a bit dim.   
  
“As I slayed a dragon,” Sigdís was the first to recover herself enough to reply, “that doesn’t seem likely.”  
  
Gir’s cheeks took ona  ruddy hue and he swallowed. “I suppose not.”  
  
The two nodded, evidently satisfied that he’d overcome his own ignorance.   
  
“She’s seen more of the world than I have,” Thrór added with all the proud admiration most Men reserved for speaking of their wife’s beauty or accomplishments in the kitchen. “Gone abroad, hunting - for sport and for warfare. The game room’s stuffed with her trophies.”  
  
“Jonr wanted to make an exhibition of it,” Sigdís informed her husband. “Some survey of my kills - I told him to fuck right off as there’s no 'collection’ to be shown. I haven’t finished drawing my bow or my pike.”  
  
“I’m sure he didn’t mean any offense,” Thrór replied as Gir tried to inconspicuously clean out one of his ears to be sure he’d  _heard_  correctly. “Just wants to show you off, no harm in that.”  
  
“Nah, I don’t like it,” Sigdís huffed. “It’s the sort of thing you do for a dwarf well past his prime, which I’m  _not_ , thanks very much. I’ll not have the Mountain think I’m ready to hang up my axes and take a quite job in the forge.”  
  
“There’s naught wrong with a quiet job in the forge!” Thrór exclaimed, sounding slightly offended himself. “Not all of us like camping, you know. Nor riding - as for your accomplishments, I’m sure you’ve a great many beasts that are waiting to be stuffed and mounted in the forest, but even you’ve got to admit, that’s no small feat.”  
  
He jabbed his thumb back at the dragon head which, once again, Gir had forgotten about for five minutes together. The queen grinned. “Well. There’s always Durin’s Bane.” And then she walked away, winking at Thrór and giving Gir a quick nod.  
  
“Durin’s Bane,” Thrór muttered, rolling his eyes. “I think she likes to see me break out in a cold sweat in company. So, Gir, is your wife about?”  
  
In fact, she was not. He fancied the sight of so grisly a thing as a stripped skull would be too overwhelming for her sensibilities. She was home with the children and he told Thrór as much.   
  
“That’s nice,” he smiled. “What does she do, then?”  
  
“Ah…” he began, then halted. What  _did_  she do? After all the praise and accomplishments that had fallen from Thrór’s lips, he thought he should come up with something. But he realized he really had no idea. “Erm. Needlework.”  
  
“A seamstress?” Thrór asked, evidently delighted, though Gir was taken aback, momentarily  _appalled_  that Thrór thought that the Lord of Dale was wed to a commonworkwoman - until he recalled that the King Under the Mountain was married to what appeared to be a cross between a mercenary and a poacher and twice as vicious as the two combined. He tamped down his ire and just nodded, letting the mistake stand. “I’m rotten with needle and thread myself, better with a hammer and chisel by  _far_. Next time I’m in Dale, I’ll call on you both, I’d like to see her work as you’ve seen Dísa’s.”  
  
“Ah,” Gir repeated. “Surely. That…we’ll look forward to it.”  
  
Shortly thereafter he said his goodbyes and made sure to hurry home - he had to be positive that his wife did, in fact, embroider before he permitted the King Under the Mountain to step over his threshold.   
  
Leyna seemed surprised that he asked if she ever did any needlework - she  _did_  embroider, as he might have noticed when they passed the evening together, but he was so often occupied with matters of state (or, just as frequently, reclined with his nose in a book) that it did not altogether shock her when he put the question to her.  
  
“Well, the King Under the Mountain wants to see it,” he said, glancing about the room. “I just saw his…I mean, the whole  _town_  just saw - and evidently there’s  _more_ …could you embroider a dragon, maybe? He might come with his wife. Apparently, she likes dragons.”  
  
“Does she?” Leyna asked mildly as a servant came in with the tea things. “Strange. I’d heard she killed them.”  
  
Gir stared at her, astonished. “How did - but I thought - didn’t everyone think  _Thrór_  had - ”  
  
“Perhaps the Sovereigns did, but they were mistaken, I believe,” Leyna said, pouring her husband’s tea and handing it to him carefully, for his hands were shaking more than usual. “The servants seemed to tell it true - those who are in contact with the tradesmen who buy and sell to the mountain, they said it was the new Queen who felled the drake. Some said she gave the head to the King as a love-token.”  
  
She spoke all of this so quietly and sedately that Gir wondered whether or not she was joking. But she sipped her tea and helped herself to cake and at no time giggled or laughed to show she had been teasing.   
  
“Oh,” Gir said, sinking into his accustomed chair by the fire. “Well. I hadn’t heard that - do you - do you suppose, among dwarves, that it’s the ladies who court the gentlemen? And with gifts of dragon’s heads.”  
  
“Well, to be fair, I don’t believe that dragons’ heads are commonly given as gifts, even among dwarves,” Leyna said tactfully. “As for their courting habits, well, I’m not sure. I haven’t made a deep study of them, save of those dwarrows and 'dams one meets upon the streets.”  
  
“Does one?” Gir asked helplessly. “Do you know, before today, I was sure I’d never  _seen_  a lady dwarf - and do you know,” he lowered his voice as if the walls had ears, “do you know, I’m  _still_  not certain I have seen one?”  
  
Now Leyna did laugh, “Oh nonsense, I’m sure you’ve seen dozens, Gir. You did meet the Queen, after all. No, no, I’m sure you’ve met your share of lady dwarves. You simply might have neglected to pay enough attention.” 

Gir drank his tea that night. And then, about a month later, he and his wife received the King and Queen under the Mountain, along with their baby son. They complimented his wife very handsomely on her work (and seemed a little surprised that Gir had none of his own to show off).   
  
Gir spoke often of his growing friendship with the King and Queen after that day. Formerly, he had not been in the habit of venturing up to the Mountain for more than the needs of business, but on slow afternoons he would make the trek. Out of a kind of fascination, he thought, though his fascination was never to be exactly satisfied and the more he fancied he knew of dwarves, the less he seemed to understand. Thrór’s popularity among the Men of Dale was elevated, in part, because the Lord was so often given to speaking of him and his wife. And so their visitors increased.  
  
The dwarves, in the end, perceived no insult. How could they eschew the honor of visits to their monarch from their neighbors? And if some thought they’d come to gawp at the queen rather than pay all due respect to the king, well, what of that? She was a singular creature, after all, even among dwarves. 


	6. Helping Hand (Haldr&Thorin Kid!Fic)

“Where does this one go?”

“ _Up your arse,_ ” Haldr muttered under his breath as he turned, expecting to see one of the first year apprentices. He was only slightly surprised to see the young prince of Erebor standing behind him on tip-toe with a book over his head. 

Thorin blinked once, but did not otherwise react to the less-than-polite answer he’d received for his question. Ama told him that he was less-than-polite himself, sometimes, when people asked him a question and he did not answer. He supposed it worked the other way round.

“Give it here,” Haldr said, holding out a hand for the book - a picture book, he’d have to go all the way back down the stairs and into the children’s room (a corner of the library into which he rarely ventured because it so often contained children). 

Thorin took a half-step back, hugging the book to his chest. “I’ll do it myself.”

“You’ll ride into Moria,” Haldr snapped, rapidly losing his patience. Shelving was one of his least-favorite occupations, but if he did not do it, he could not be assured that it was being done  _right_. “Give it here, you don’t know where it belongs.”

“But you could tell me and I could do it,” Thorin reasoned. He rocked back on his heels and waited. Mister Haldr was always awfully busy, but he also knew all there was to know about the library. In Thorin’s eyes, that made him a rare hero.

“You seem to believe this is a conversation, it is, in fact, a command -  _give it_ ,” Haldr snarled, making a snatching motion for the book, but Thorin darted under his arm and headed for the staircase. Cursing loudly, Haldr followed. 

“I want to help!” Thorin declared with all the passion his little two-foot body could muster. Haldr’s four-and-a-half-foot body was unimpressed. 

“Wait forty years and become an apprentice,” he snapped, tapping his toe upon the floor and folding his arms, glaring menacingly down at the child. If he expected that to be the end of the conversation, he was sorely mistaken.

“May I?” Thorin asked, eyes wide. He dropped the book he was holding in his excitement as he spun round and shouted, “Hooray!”

Both Thorin and Haldr watched in silence as the book, flung away in all the child’s enthusiasm, skidded toward the staircase, then fell all the long way to the bottom with a clatter.

“Oops,” Thorin said, worrying his lower lip with his teeth. To Haldr’s alarm, his eyes began rapidly welling with tears; if there was one thing he hated more than an over-eager dwarfling, it was a crying one.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” he said hastily, patting Thorin roughly on the head to calm him. “Come along, I’m sure it’s fine - ”

It was not fine. The pages had torn away from the binding and hung in a limp cluster, suspended off the spine. Once again, Thorin’s blue eyes swam with tears and Haldr felt the beginnings of panic building in his chest. His eyes darted wildly about, but there was not a single bearing or siring dwarf who’d contributed to the Mountain’s population to come and deal with the child. This was unfair. Even when his sister begat her children, he’d insisted that his involvement would largely be limited to greeting them when they passed in the streets. He’d had a contract! But, alas, she had never signed it and thus rendered void all his intentions.

“Do you want to help me fix it?” Haldr asked loudly, directing his eyes to the ceiling and praying that the child would simply sob its way out of the library.

The tears vanished almost immediately. “May I?” Thorin asked, delighted. “Oh, thank you Mister Haldr, I’d love to!”

And then he hugged him. Just another reason why Haldr passionately _hated_  shelving.


	7. A Different Journey (Thorin&Disa, Disa!LivesAU)

The whistle functioned as a sort of a signal. It had Thorin furiously wiping his eyes and furtively plucking up a bit of snow to freeze the redness out of his cheeks. Foolish, this. To run off and go to pieces when he was needed.

The whistle had been short, but sharp. It any other dwarf, it would have been a sign to make haste, march quickly, double-step. But Thorin knew the sound well and knew that its source was far too impatient to wait for him to come to  _her_.  
  
The crunching of ice under heavy boots confirmed his initial thought; he didn’t have to move at all.  
    
Umad loomed over him, huge in her furs, but she took her hood down and stared down the bridge of her long, oft-broken nose at him frankly. “I’d not brook such from anyone else,” she said in a low, rumbling voice that had Thorin hanging his head, sure he was going to receive yet another rebuke that evening. “Anyone else said as much, I’d knock ‘em on their arse.”  
  
_Here it comes,_  he thought, bracing for the tirade, the litany of,  _stupid, stupid, stupid, can’t I trust you with anything_?  
  
“But I raised an arsehole and that’s the truth of it,” she said, finishing unexpectedly.   
  
It took Thorin a moment to realize she wasn’t calling  _him_  an arsehole.   
“What?” he asked, looking up at her with red eyes. For all his height, he still couldn’t quite meet her gaze when he stared straight ahead. Oddly, that was comforting.   
  
“It’s one thing to ride a fellow about a single failing when it happens,” she continued, folding her arms over her chest and glaring (but only in Thorin’s direction, not _at_  Thorin). “To say, 'Here’s where you went wrong, don’t let it happen again,’ but your adad takes it too far. Got a catalog for a brain, always has. And it does no good to pile on mistakes from years and years back that have nothing to do with today. All it does is wear a body out. You and him.”  
  
“Didn’t seem to wear him out,” Thorin mumbled, aware he was being insolent, but past caring.   
  
“Ha,” Umad laughed flatly. “Well, the voice I can’t vouch for, for that’s my legacy to him - I can bellow and shout for hours on end and smoke a pipe when all’s said and done, so can he. But just because he’s got stamina for shouting, it doesn’t mean he  _ought_  to - understand?”  
  
The tears sprang to Thorin’s eyes afresh. He wasn’t sure what hurt more - the scolding itself or being told he didn’t deserve it.   
  
He was taken aback when a pair of strong arms crushed him to a broad chest. Umad tucked his head under her chin and held him tight. After a moment, he clung on.   
  
“It’s a bitter season,” she said, gently, though not quietly. “No one likes making camp in the winter - wet weather, frozen or not. Makes dwarves tired at the watch, stings the eyes, or else makes you sleepy. We shouldn’t have you lads posted through the night, but we’re short hands. We make do. Mistakes’re bound to happen. Don’t think too much on it - I’m not, and I’m the one you’ve got to answer to. If I thought you needed tearing into, I’d have done it myself. You don’t doubt that, do you lad?”  
  
Mutely, Thorin shook his head, pressing his face deeper into her coat.   
“Well, then,” she said, giving him another squeeze. “Over and done. So don’t you think on it. Your adad’s been given  _strict_  orders to button his lips about it and believe me, they’re not orders he’d soon defy. So come on back and eat something. You’ll feel better for it. Got ourselves a boar and all and nevermind about a few pilfered ponies. Less mouths to feed at day’s end.”  
  
“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” Thorin said, pulling away and squinting up at her, dry-eyed now.  
  
Umad laughed, “'Course I am! That’s not obvious? How am I doing?”  
  
Thorin managed a smile, “You do alright.” 


	8. Mama's Boy (Dwalin&Dora, Teen!Fic)

_Thump. Thump._

That’d be the shield - heavy wood, uncarved.

_Thump. Shuffle. Shuffle. Hop. Hop. Thump._

Oneboot, then the other (after a bit of undignified wiggling). To follow was the padded surcoat, then the - ah, no, foregoing removing the belt. 

She really had plenty of warning, but it was a near thing as Dóra rested her book on the side of the couch and nearly five-and-a-half feet of overgrown dwarfling fell on her _._

Dwalin had been throwing himself over the back of the couch since he was old enough to climb. Sooner or later he was going to break it - which might have been his intention. No one could accuse him of not being clever. Or stubborn. 

“Buy a new one,” he groaned as he always did when he wound up with his legs flung over the far arm and one shoulder wedged between his mother’s side and the cushions. “It’s not  _comfortable_.”

“Serves me well enough,” she remarked, carding her fingers through his hair. He had her coloring, but his hair was coarse, likes his father’s. And incredibly sweaty. “Hard day?”

“You’re wee,” Dwalin mumbled, depositing his damp hair in her lap. If once there had been a braid fixed in. there was no trace now. “Stupid. Loni had us running. Thorin won - ‘course he did, he’s got legs like a colt. Then bouts. I won those. Now I want a nap.”

“You want a bath,” his mother observed. “You didn’t hie off with your friends afterward.”

“Nah,” he yawned. His eyes closed and Dóra smiled at him fondly. For all his grousing, he was such a sweet lad, he just couldn’t help himself. Oh, sure, he’d grow into his father’s carven good looks eventually - but he was still round-faced enough that Dóra could clearly see the plump, cheerful babe she’d carried about for years. It’d be a pity when his beard grew in well enough to cover that smile. “Thorin was bound for the library, Heidrek for the paddock, the rest wanted to sup early. I can’t sleep there.”

“You could in the library,” his mother pointed out.

“No - Uncle Haldr gets cross when I snore,” he said, twisting a bit as he tried to get comfortable with only her leg for a pillow. 

“You know,” Dóra reminisced, “I remember the little fellow who’d kick and scream and fight having a wee sleep all the way into his cot - ”

“Never happened,” Dwalin protested. “You always said I never gave you a bit of trouble.”

Dóra only smiled. Trouble? No, never. But he was responsible for a headache or two. 

“Tell me about something Balin did wrong when he was small,” he looked up and grinned at her. “I know you’ve got lots of those stories. More for him than me. I’m  _perfect_.”

“Are you?” she asked, chuffing his chin. “Fancy that - I thought it was I who was perfect.”

“Oh, Ama,” he sighed. “Don’t be silly. We both know it’s Uncle Haldr who’s perfect.”

They both had a good laugh at that. “From your mouth to the Maker’s ears,” Dóra shook her head. “I could tell you some stories of your brother, or I could get back to my book…”

“Is it any good?” 

“Oh, aye,” she said sincerely. “It’s a grammatical text.”

“I could sleep in my room - ” he began, but made no move to get up.

“Ah, hush,” Dóra patted his arm that wasn’t squashed up by his side. “It’s a novel - do you want a pillow?”

“You’ll do,” Dwalin said, evidently very happy to stay where he was, despite the narrowness of the couch. “Start from the beginning,”

“Eh?“ she cocked her head. “What was that?”

Big brown eyes, bright smile - nah, he couldn’t help himself, he was just an effortlessly darling boy. “Please, Ama?”

“Alright, then,” Dóra settled back and started to read. Not five minutes later, she had to admit that Haldr had a point about his snoring.


	9. With Friends Like These (Thorin&Dwalin Kid!Fic)

If Dwalin had a fault, it was that he loved too much.

Or too hard, at the very least. Poor little Thorin was the victim of his always well-intentioned, often too enthusiastic hugs and kisses. The trouble was, how to address the problem without putting Dwalin off affection all together. 

“Oh, no, no sweetling!” Dóra would cry warningly as Dwalin ran at Thorin, arms outstretched. Nine times out of ten she managed to catch him by the arm and guide him into a gentler embrace. The tenth time, Dwalin would slam into Thorin, knocking both of them onto the floor, resulting in tears all around. 

“Dwalin!” Freya would scold, rather more sharply. “Now you’re both wet!”

The two of them had teeth coming in, so kisses were rather a more slobbery affair than most dwarves preferred. Dwalin also had a habit of grasping Thorin’s face between his two hands when he kissed him, which was less a kiss and more of a process of open-mouthed drooling on Thorin’s face. Thorin did give as good as he got, at least in this arena; he tended to suck on Dwalin’s cheek, leaving a red mark behind. 

“At least they’re friends,” Fundin would offer weakly, after another round of throwing balls at one another ended with Thorin trying to pull himself up to standing on Dwalin and knocked them both on the carpet with a thump. 

“I think they both need better friends,” Thráin would reply, waiting to see if one of them would actually cry before he stepped in.

But neither minded the falls. They kept coming back for more. Perhaps it was the fact that there were relatively few dwarflings under the Mountain, fewer still who were known to their parents and as a consequence, Dwalin and Thorin were often one another’s sole playmates. It was an arrangement that suited them well enough, for Thorin smiled when he saw Dwalin had come to his home and Dwalin would schriek and clap his hands when he heard the name ‘Thorin’ (or, as he said it, ‘T’oe-yin!’). And every once in a ahile, they got it right. 

“Oh, aren’t they the dearest things?” Dóra asked when Thorin yawned while playing and rested his head on Dwalin’s shoulder. Dwalin placed a wet kiss on the top of his head in response. 

“Ahem,” Balin replied, clearly disgruntled. “I’m the dearest thing.”

“Right you are,” his mother began, but his father laughed and shook his head.

“Nothing doing,” he grinned at Balin. “You’ve been replaced.”

“Fundin!” Dóra exclaimed indignantly as Balin drew himself up and seemed prepared to argue the point with his father. Somehow, in the time it took her to look away, Dwalin and Thorin bumped heads - and instantly went from darling, to weeping. 

As his parents comforted the infants, Balin smiled smugly, “I’m still the dearest.”


	10. Understanding (Thorin&Lufi Kid!Fic)

“I’m running away.”

Thorin nodded very seriously. It was always best to keep a serious countenance during times like this. Especially when the matter wasn’t so serious as all that.

Bofur often described him as the ‘worriedest dwarf as ever slew an orc,’ and he wasn’t exactly wrong, but Thorin wasn’t so likely to be overcome that he took little Lúfi’s threat to heart. In the first place, dwarflings who sought to run away, leaving their families bereft generally did not announce their plans to a friend of their parents’. In the second, he’d planned very poorly. The satchel slung over his shoulder held books, not blankets, and the only bit of food he had on him appeared to be an apple, which he’d apparently been sampling on his way out of town. 

“Are you?” Thorin asked, raising an eyebrow and leaning on his elbows over the stall counter of the forge to see him better - Lúfi’s head didn’t quite touch the lip. “Pity.”

“Oh, I know,” he agreed. “When I’m gone, they’ll be sore sorry they run me out o’town. Weeping and wailing, I’ll bet, the lot of them.”

Thorin made a noise of agreement deep in his throat. “Where are you off to, then?”

“The Red Mountains,” Lúfi replied promptly. “As they’ve got use for scholars there. That’s what Mister Balin says, he says that the Stonefoot dwarves’ve got libraries as deep as the very middle bit o’the world and they been collecting to fill ‘em up since the days when the Fathers an’ Mothers walked ‘neath the earth.”

“That’s how I’ve heard it said,” Thorin nodded. He walked out the side entrance to the forge and crouched down before Lúfi. “But that’s an awfully long way to go to take yourself to the library.”

“Well, Ma and Da says I can’t get in the one here,” he explained, scowling at the dirt. “S’too dear, they says. We’d do better to spend the money on food, they says. And rent. And clothes. But the clothes are Bili’s fault, he’s the one what grows so much. I stay little and I don’t want no more clothes. I want a pass for the library.”

“Ah,” Thorin said, nodding. He was sure the cause would come out eventually. And luckily, he wasn’t long to wait; Lúfi was a talker. The third of five children (well, five for the moment, Bombur and Thyra gave no indication that they were finished working on their family, may the blessings of the Maker fall upon them), and of a more bookish bent than all the rest, it was easy to see where he thought that making his way to the Red Mountains on foot would be a practical solution to his problems. 

“They said,” Lúfi continued, taking another bite of his apple, “that if three or more of us were keen, they’d think on it, but it’s just me! Catla says them books what Mister Balin’s got does her well enough and Bili don’t care for lessons and Alfi’s too little to mind much o’anything and Varla’s even worse!”

“Mmm,” Thorin agreed. “That’s rough.”

“Aye!” Lúfi practically nodded the head off his neck, so vigorously did he agree. 

“If it makes you feel better,” Thorin offered, “I don’t think Alfi or Varla know how to read yet. They might like the idea of a pass to the library, in a few years.”

“No, Mister Thorin,” Lúfi sighed dramatically. “You’re wrong. It won’t be a few years, it’ll be ages yet! For Varla’s a baby and Alfi’s years off his schooling! And with me own bad luck, neither of them’ll take to it. You just wait and see.”

The particular family of Broadbeam dwarves with whom Thorin’s own kin had developed an intimacy with had a characteristic golden cheer that covered all of them. It was easy to see how they got that way. The pessimism had to be purged into one member of the family every few years. 

It was actually rather comforting, on Thorin’s part; he was starting to think that his family was anomalous. “What’s to say that the fees for the Red Mountain libraries aren’t thrice the sum of ours?”

Lúfi opened his mouth, clearly sitting on a brilliant retort - then he closed it again, when he realized he didn’t have an answer. “Well. What’s to say they’re the same?”

It was Thorin’s turn to close his mouth as he tried to think of a reply; he’d never visited the Red Mountains in his life - what did he know about it, after all?

“It just seems like an awfully long way to go,” he settled on. “When you aren’t sure you’ll get what you want in the end. Big risk for no reward.”

Lúfi thought. And munched on his apple. When he got down to the core, he held it up to Thorin and asked, “Can you toss it away, please?”

Thorin threw it on the fire for him, through the door, with perfect aim. It was only embers anyway, it being the end of the day. Dwalin would’ve given him a smack for it, but Dwalin wasn’t there at the moment. “Was that the last of your rations?”

“Aye,” Lúfi sighed regretfully. “And I missed eating breakfast. I was packing.”

“What’ve you got there?” Thorin asked, peeking into his satchel. Lúfi removed three thin books of legend and one rather thicker book on bookbinding. 

“I thought they might ‘prentice me, if I read all about the making o’books. But there’s lots o’words I don’t know,” he explained. 

Thorin tapped his chin thoughtfully. “That’s a problem. Could be you need to keep to your lessons with Mister Balin a few years before you run away. Or, I suppose you could go to the library, see if they have a simpler volume.”

Lúfi frowned and hurriedly packed his books away. “Wasn’t you listening, Mister Thorin? I don’t have a pass!”

“But I have,” Thorin said, trying to stifle a smile. It was very hard. Lúfi looked so stunned you could have knocked him over with a blade of grass.

“You?!” he asked, incredulously. “But you’re a smith! And a king too! What use’ve you got for books?”

“Lots!” Thorin exclaimed in a tone that bordered on indignant. “Smiths do read - some of us. And kings as well. Some of us.” He imagined those with actual kingdoms to run might have had less time for leisurely evening reading than he did. “Anyhow, I do have access to the library - the lending library, not the others, but how’s that for a start?”

“I could go with you?” Lúfi asked, eyes wide. “I really truly could?”

“Really truly,” Thorin confirmed. “So long as you don’t mind passing the evening with me and delaying your journey.”

“Oh, well, I hasn’t go to go anywheres now,” Lúfi said carelessly. “Not if you’ll take me to the library! Can we go now?”

“Let me lock up,” Thorin said. “Then we can go.”

 Fíli and Kíli were in no way bookish. Any time Thorin asked them if they’d like to accompany him on a trip to the library, they squirmed, unwilling to disappoint him, but not eager to come along. “You can just read to us, Uncle,” Kíli reminded him and Fíli agreed that he’d much prefer to be read to than to do the reading himself. 

It would be rather nice to have a companion, at last, Thorin mused. He locked the side entrance and turned back to find Lúfi hopping up and down on the balls of his feet. He raised his hand immediately to take Thorin’s once he was near enough to grab - possibly to keep him from changing his mind and running off.

“I can get whatever I want?” he asked.

“You can get two of whatever you want,” Thorin replied, taking the lad’s hand in his. “I’m limited to five items and I’ve three already. But you can have my other two.”

“Oh, thank you Mister Thorin!” Lúfi dropped his hand and grabbed Thorin around the legs in a tight squeeze. “Thank you! I’ll be so careful! I won’t eat round ‘em or nothing! I’ll hide ‘em! I’ll hide ‘em so’s me brothers and sisters can’t get to them!”

“Just unhide them after a month,” Thorin said, patting him on the head. “I can’t afford the late fees.”  


	11. Babysitting (Thrain&Dwalin Kid!Fic)

There was some manner of last-minute meeting, at least, Thrá in thought that was what Dóra said before she dashed out of the room, leaving a rather important something behind.

To be fair, that was her purpose in coming, to leave her youngest son behind in Thráin’s office. She’d done it often enough when Balin was small – though, Thráin hadn’t had an office then, nor a son of his own. He rather thought that Thorin would exempt him from other child-minding duties. But his son was currently spending time with Freya’s mother and Thráin had nothing more pressing to than balance the accounts. Important enough that his presence wasn’t required at whatever new outrage required Dóra’s attention. But not so important that he couldn’t keep an eye on Dwalin. And as he only had the one, that was what was going to take up the majority of his attention he had no doubt.

After much encouragement (and then an equal amount of regret), coaxing, encouragement, and bribery Dwalin had finally learned to walk – and was inclined to take his newfound skill and improve on it, to the point that every time he was put down, he attempted to run and usually fell down on his face. Then cried about it, as if he hadn’t expected it.

History seemed about to repeat itself. Dwalin ran around the side of Thráin’s desk, looking up and giggling madly. Other children might have cried at being left so abruptly by one of their parents, but not Dwalin. No, so long as there was another body about that he could smile at, he went right on smiling.

Thráin wiggled his fingers at him in a half-hearted wave. Dwalin clapped his fat little hands together and let out a thrilled little scream – which made Thráin cringe and he immediately dropped his hand – no point in encouraging that.

Dwalin toddled away unsteadily, toward the bag his mother had left behind when she dropped him on the floor. Thráin watched him go, marveling that a child who moved so very much could be so very portly. A dwarf through and though – when he wasn’t exerting himself, Dwalin could likely be found eating.

“Ba!” He crowed triumphantly, holding a rubber ball aloft.

“Ball?” Thráin tried to encourage him, getting out of his chair at last since Dwalin’s ability to walk and hold something at the same time was only slightly more advanced than his ability to run. Thank the Maker Thorin hadn’t tried anything more difficult than a swift crawl. Yet.

“Ba!” Dwalin shouted again, throwing the ball inexpertly toward Thráin. At least, Thráin thought that he was aiming in his general direction, though the ball fell well short of its target.

“Ball?” Thráin tried again, a little less confidently this time; Dwalin didn’t excel at the spoken word. Freya commented on it with increasing frequency, though Thráin couldn’t see what she was so concerned about; speaking was just one of many things that Dwalin performed poorly.

“Ba!” Dwalin announced, this time pointing at the ball. Thráin decided that the child’s meaning was clear enough, though his enunciation required some work. He was sure Dóra had the issue well in hand. Thráin bent down, retrieved the ball and handed it back to Dwalin.

“There you go,” he said, turning back to his desk. He was halfway there when he heard a ball skittering across the stone behind him.”

“BA!” Dwalin ran over to Thráin and would have fallen had not the timely reach of Thráin’s hand caught him by the back of the shirt. Hovering inches from the floor, Dwalin craned his head around and smiled broadly, drool dripping off his chin and onto the floor.

Having a child of his own meant Thráin was more acquainted with the spewing of unsavory liquid, but he had no great tolerance for it. He’d merely taken to arming himself with a pocket handkerchief at all times.

“Disgusting,” he informed Dwalin, mopping up his chin and setting him back on his feet.

Dwalin didn’t understand much more than he spoke. With a mighty hurl, he threw the ball at Thráin with greater accuracy – hitting him on the scarred and pitted socket over his left eye.

“You’re lucky there’s nothing there anymore,” Thráin grumbled, handing the ball back. “Don’t do it again.”

Naturally, Dwalin pitched the ball again. This time Thráin caught it. Dwalin evidently had seen little in his life more impressive. He shouted again and clapped his hands vigorously – so vigorously that he fell on his bottom, but nothing could dampen his enthusiasm. He laughed as he fell and Thráin couldn’t help himself. He smiled.

“You’re a strange little fellow, you know that?” he asked, holding his hand out to help Dwalin find his balance. Dwalin took one of Thráin’s fingers, but rather than hauling himself upright, he crawled into Thráin’s lap.

“Ba,” he said contentedly, snuggling his face into Thráin’s beard.

“I don’t know what that means,” Thráin complained.

Dwalin just smiled.


	12. Number One Dad (Kili&Bombur Kid!Fic)

“If you could pick - ” Kíli begain, before his brother interrupted him.

“This is a dangerous game.”

“It’s not, it’s just a game - but if you could _pick_ , who’d you have for a Da?”

Fíli privately thought they were too old for this game. It was Mister Bombur’s Name Day and all their companions were gone away to plan the party, helping their ma with food and drink before the guests arrived. As Fíli, Kíli and Ori were all among the guests, that left them with nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs and braid their beards until sunset. 

The three of them lay on the grass in back of the smithy, watching lazy clouds pass overhead. They didn’t look like animals or weapons, as they sometimes did. Just bits of fluff. No use in arguing over what the clouds looked most like, it was probably why Kíli decided to start in on this game of ‘what if.’

“Our Da,” Fíli said, squinting at the bright, bright blue overhead. “Obviously. Think on how pleased Mam’d be.”

“No, that’s - it’s got to be someone we _know_ ,” Kíli tutted as if his brother was being thick just to vex him. “I’d pick Mister Dwalin, if I could have my way. We’d be so _tall_. And no one’d needle us or tease us since we’d just say, ‘Oh, you wait ‘til we tell our Da - ‘”

“If Mister Dwalin was our Da, he’d want us fighting our own fights, not using him for our fists,” Fíli pointed out. “And if Mister Dwalin was our father, Mister Balin’d be our uncle and what if we took after him?”

“Mister Balin’s good, though,” Ori pointed out softly. “I’d not mind having him for a Da. If I could pick.”

“That’s true,” Kíli said. “Good in a fight and he’s smart as anything. But he’s _short_.”

“Our Da was short,” Fíli reminded his brother. Kíli’d never asked many questions about their father when they were really little, not as many as Fíli’d asked. It was why he sometimes had to remind Kíli about him, that he was short, but handsome and had big broad hands and a jolly laugh. These weren’t things Fíli really remembered, but he’d asked. That was why he’d asked. 

Kíli sighed hugely. “S’why we’re picking. I’d have Mister Dwalin and Ori’d have Mister Balin - ”

“I didn’t say he was my pick,” Ori objected. “I just said I’d not mind having him.”

Kíli propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Ori. “Who’d you want then? I’d think he’d be your pick since you’re his favorite - I think so, he always picks you to answer what all the rest of us don’t know in lessons.”

“I don’t know,” Ori squirmed a little, rolling on his side and playing with the grass. “My Ama’s good. Good enough for two. I don’t need a Da.”

“Well, none of us _needs_  one,” Kíli said. “This is just a game. Who do you want? Only don’t say you want Narvi, it’s got to be someone you know.“

Ori was quiet, thinking. He bit his lip and looked so melancholy that Fíli was about to tell Kíili to let him alone with his questions. But before he did, Ori said, “Mister Bombur.”

“What?” Kíli asked, confused. “You don’t have to pick him ‘cos it’s his Name Day.”

“I’m not!” Ori insisted. “Mister Bombur, he’s - ”

“Short.”

“Kíli,” Fíli groaned. “You can’t just brush everyone off ‘cos they’re short. I think Mister Bombur’s a good pick. He’s kindly.”

“Aye,” Ori agreed. “And he’s…he gives good hugs.”

“So does Uncle Thorin,” Kíli mumbled. “And he’s tall.”

“But I like that Mister Bombur’s not so tall,” Ori replied. “He’s…I don’t know. He sees more of what’s going on. With his children.”

“If Mister Bombur was your Da, you’d have more brothers and sisters than you could count. Thank you need,” Fíli grinned.

“That’d be alright,” Ori sighed. “Being the youngest is…well, when it’s only me, sometimes there’s a lot of attention. Mister Bombur pays attention, but it’s equal. For each of them, his and his missus’s children. I like their house, it’s cozy and warm. There’s lots of bodies about. I like that.”

“Eugh, it’s nice to visit,” Kíli said, “but there’s too many dwarflings about. I like having Mam all to myself when I want her. Or Uncle, when I want him. Mister Bombur’s got to be shared by all his children.”

“There’s plenty to go round,” Fíli pointed out.

“Mmm,” Kíli shrugged. “I suppose. Still.”

“I don’t know why you like this game,” Fíli huffed, sitting up. “Every time we play, you say everyone else’s ideas are stupid.”

“Not stupid,” Kíli replied. “Just not so good as mine. Anyway…I like pretending. Since…Mister Dwalin’s about, isn’t he? Nearly all the time. So it’s easiest to pretend that he’s my Da.”

“I thought you said you didn’t need a Da, were you fibbing?” Ori asked.

“No,” Kíli said. “Just…I don’t need one. But sometimes I want one.”

“Want one what?”

Mister Bombur stood over them, casting a long shadow. He smiled down at the lads and held his hands out to tug them to their feet. “I was just kicked out o’me own house and sent to get you - Catla’s got some surprise she’s whipping up that I’m not to see. She swore all the household to secrecy - ”

“Oh, I know!” Kíli volunteered, hopping to his feet without taking Mister Bombur’s hand. “It’s a trebouchet!”

Fíli groaned, “Kíli! You weren’t supposed to tell! Now she’ll get you good!“

Kíli paled instantly, but Bombur patted his head, “That’s alright, lad, let’s take a walk, the three of us. I’ll do me best to forget all about it.“

Giving Mister Bombur a grateful hug, Kíli looked up, all worried. “You promise? And if you don’t forget, you won’t say it was me who did the telling, will you?”

Placing a hand over his heart, Mister Bombur swore, “On me honor, I’ll say I guessed.”

They took the long way about around the village, Mister Bombur holding Kíli and Ori’s hands in the encroaching dark. As the stars came out, he beckoned Fíli closer and tucked him up by his side, though he still guided Kíli with his hand. Privately, Fíli still thought his brother’s game was a silly one - but he couldn’t deny, Mister Bombur was a very capable Da.


	13. Naptime (Fundin&Dwalin Teen!Fic)

Fundin was fond of cliche where his sons were concerned. Balin had taken to rolling his eyes every time he complimented him by saying that he, ‘Couldn’t be prouder.’ 

“Sometimes I think you’ve got a low standard, Da,” he joked once and Fundin gave him a cuff about the back of the head for his cheek - not that it lessened his pride a jot, but occasionally Balin was just a touch impudent.

Fundin was a dwarf of few words, he relied on his wife to speak gilded words enough for both of them. Just because he spoke the same sentiments over and over again, it didn’t lessen the depth of feeling in his heart. 

Luckily, Dwalin was a bit more forgiving. He’d grin and say, “Thanks, Da,” he he was informed for the thousandth time that he’d once again reached the outermost limits of his father’s pride. 

Today for instance - however, Fundin had not the time to express his hackneyed approval for Dwalin had disappeared from the tournament arena ahead of the rest of his fellows.

It was the first day of training for the apprentice Guard, a hundred eager young laddies and lassies had been put through their paces, first in the gymnasium, then upon horseback, and finally in the tourney chambers, facing off against Masters with wooden weapons. 

Dwalin had outpaced them all, easily. He ran faster, fought harder, and threw himself into whatever task had been set to him with a single-mindedness that earned Fundin impressed looks and pats on the back from his colleagues. Well, all but Loni, his oldest and dearest friend who’d only sighed, “Aww, how sweet, he’s doing his best for you.”

“Not for me,” Fundin denied, but he was well puffed up with pride by day’s end. f only he’d been able to share that pride with his son. 

“Thorin?” he asked, coming up to the young prince who’d stayed after to work on his grip with his less-dominant hand with Tírra, who also had the misfortune of favoring one hand over the other. “Where’s your partner in crime got to?”

“No idea,” the lad huffed and puffed. “Heidrek and I wanted to go out to the races - ”

“To have   _look_  at the races!” Heidrek piped up where he sat along the side, holding a side of cold meat to his black eye. 

“Aye, to have a look, as we can’t bet,” Thorin added. Tírra snorted and Fundin made a little ‘hmm,’ in his throat; they knew as well as anyone that the race track was full of dwarflings trying to get older friends to place bets for them. “But he left, I don’t know where he’s gone.”

“Right,” Fundin nodded. “Well, I’m off - don’t spend all your money, now.”

“We’re not - ”

But he was gone form the arena before he could hear the rest of the lads’ badly thought out lies. He didn’t encounter Dwalin on the way back to his rooms, but he thought he might have retired to the family home to have a thorough wash. Yet when he came through the front door, all he saw was his wife, sitting in her usual armchair, reading a book. 

“Ey!” he called to her, grinning hugely. “That son of ours was top of the class, I thought you’d want to -”

“Shh!” Dóra said, putting a finger to her lips. “Softly, please.”

“Sorry,” Fundin replied with his brow furrowed. “Headache?”

“Oh, no,” Dóra lay her book aside and smiled slightly mischievously. “Not for my sake. But go on, he did well?”  
  
“More than well he was the clear best of the lot - not that anyone said as much, we’ve got to be a bit rough on them the first day, else they’ll never mind, but I thought it wouldn’t do harm to tell him after. Only I can’t find him.”

Dóra’s smile deepened and she got up, crooking a finger to beckon Fundin to follow her. She led the way up to their bedroom, once again gesturing him to be quiet as she opened the door to their room. 

Dwalin hadn’t gone for a wash, as it turned out. He went straight home, toed his boots off and collapsed into his parents’ bed, which he’d maintained for years was more comfortable than his own.

“Sounds as though he earned a rest,” Dóra remarked.

“Aye, he did,” Fundin nodded, smiling fondly. A fine young warrior he’d proved himself to be, but he was still very young. And ripe for a bit of teasing. 

“Oh, Fundin, leave him!” Dóra scolded from the doorway as Fundin made the mattress dip when he lay down next to Dwalin.

The lad’s face twitched and he buried his head in a pillow. Fundin patted his hair and rumbled in his ear, “Tired, then?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Dwalin replied sleepily, hugging the blankets closer. 

“You did well today, young know,” Fundin said, kissing the top of his head. “I Couldn’t be prouder.”

Dwalin opened his eyes blearily and managed a smile. “Thanks, Da. You’re not trying to get me up, are you? Ama said I could have a sleep.”

“Nah, your Ma’s got to be obeyed in all things,” Fundin said, giving his shoulder a squeeze and leaving him in peace. 

“Wake me for supper,” Dwalin requested, then, just like that, was out again. 

“Obeyed in all things, eh?” Dóra asked when they shut the door on Dwalin.

Fundin lifted her off her feet for a kiss. “Oh, aye. You’re always right, after all. And you gave me two fine lads, it’s the least you’re owed.”


	14. Snuggles (Vili&Fili Kid!Fic)

Well, the lad couldn’t be said to have much in the way of conversation.

“Blllllrrrphgh.”

“Oh, aye? And how’d the other one fare?”

“Mamamamama.”

“Oooh, that sounds  _terrible_.”

“Eeeeeeeee!”

“Right so!” Víli agreed as Fíli shrieked and flailed his wee arms about, bopping his father on the nose. “There’s a arm! Go on, do it again.”

But Fíli did not do it again, his fingers found his father’s beard and gave it a hard yank.

“Ha!” Dís laughed triumphantly from the doorway. “It’s usually me he does that to, glad to know I’m not the only one he gets cross with.”

“Oh, he doesn’t do it ‘cos he’s cross,” Víli replied cheerfully, removing his son’s grasping fingers. “He does it ‘cos he likes us. Ain’t that so?”

Fíli’s response was to blow a very large bubble, then drool onto the bedclothes. Víli took that as agreement. 

“You’re having a nice time, then?” Dís said, smiling crookedly. “You don’t mind if I - ”

“Nah, off you go, have fun.”

“You don’t know what I’m doing.”

“No,” Víli admitted with a grin. “But have fun!”

His wife laughed - she had a beautiful laugh. Didn’t matter what she was doing or where she was going, if it made her laugh like that, he could hardly disapprove. Inspired, he wiggled his fingers into Fíli’s sides, but though his son smiled, he did not laugh; too little to enjoy a good tickling. Or, could be he had his Ma’s sensitive feet, rather than Víli’s ticklish sides. 

Granted, he did have his Da’s tummy. Fíli was built of fat from toes to top and had a round little belly that Víli poked at a bit, then kissed, though that just made him dig his hands into his hair and tug. “Ouch!”

 _Then_  Fíli giggled. Blessed lad. 

“S’alright,” Víli said. “I know you mean it with love, eh?”

Fíli stick his tongue out, then popped it back in his mouth, drooling some more. Then he turned his head at the sound of the front door closing. “That’s your Mammy gone,” Víli observed. “We’ve the whole night to our - ”

He’d not finished speaking when the door opened again. There was a slow shuffling of feet on the floor, the sound of a hammer hitting the ground heavily, dropped by a tired hand. Seemed that Dís had just missed her brother coming in.

Víli was quiet a moment, listening. Thorin stumped around the room, his footfalls sounding weary. He sighed audibly, then went into his own room - and, tellingly, did not close the door. Víli straightened up and scooped Fíli off the bed. 

“We’ve a job to do, you and I,” he informed him. “Oh! I know it’s a ways off, but when you get to talking a bit, be sure on o’your first words is ‘Thorin,’ eh? T’would do him good.”

Barreling through the room, his son tucked in his arm, Víli bellowed, “UNCLE  _THORIN_! WE’RE COMING A-CALLING!” as Fíli laughed madly all the way into his uncle’s room. 


	15. An Announcement (Thrain&Thorin Kid!Fic)

Thráin had absolutely no idea how the task had fallen to him. 

Breaking news to anyone - good or bad - was best left, he thought, to someone who could drum up an appropriate amount of enthusiasm (like his father), or someone who was sensitive enough to lay the blow gently (like his aunt). He was neither enthusiastic or sensitive, but when Freya had said to him, “Go on in and tell Thorin, for he’ll be all in a tizzy when he’s congratulated and he doesn’t know what for,” he’d not have the chance to raise an objection before she shut herself away in their private chamber to go to bed early. 

Thorin was splashing cheerfully in the bathtub. Freya was clever, he had to give her that; not only had she made him the bearer of <i>news</i> he also had to wrangle a wet, wriggly dwarfling into his bedclothes. Sometimes he really wondered how it was that  _this_  had become his life. 

“Thorin,” he said, approaching the tub cautiously - it was amazing how very  _wet_  the bathroom would become, though they only filled the tub with water enough to cover his lap. “Hasn’t it gone cold yet?” 

Thorin looked up and smiled at him, then shrugged and plunged the sailing ship he’d taken into the bath with him underwater. “No,” he replied simply.  

“The sailors’ll drown if you keep them under so long,” Thráin observed, hovering on the very edge of the puddles that shimmered faintly on the floor around the tub. He’d no intention of going to bed soaking, sleeping with a wet beard wasn’t his idea of fun. 

Immediately, Thorin let go of the boat at it bobbed back up to the surface, still half submerged and bobbing sadly. “Sorry, Adad.”

“Eh, I’m not a sailor, it doesn’t effect me,” Thráin said, mirroring the child’s shrug. 

 _Now_ , a pressing voice in the back of his head urged.  _Go on. Tell him now._

Thráin squared his shoulders and licked his lips and took a breath and…said nothing. Just observed Thorin playing for a few minutes more in silence. The thing of it was, he’d no idea what to say. He didn’t have any siblings himself, there were no stories about, ‘The day Thráin discovered he was going to be upstaged by a newborn,’ or, 'The day Thráin’s birth was announced and his older sibling pitched a fit to bring down the Mountain.’ Because that was what happened, wasn’t it?

Thráin distinctly remembered that for the first few months of Dwalin’s life, Balin was constantly trying to sell him. As Balin was one of the only dwarflings he was in regular contact with, Thráin used him as a measuring tool for normal behavior.  He could only assume that Thorin would be dismayed, if not outright horrified at the idea that he was going to be an elder brother - he was a sensitive child, as his wife often lamented. He got teary-eyed when little dwarflings got lost in his storybooks, nevermind when discussing impending upheaval in his own life. 

Thorin seemed not to notice that his father was still there, absorbed as he was in playing (and decidedly not in washing, for there was an untouched bar of soap balanced precariously on the ledge leading down to the tub which was the only thing in the bathroom that was dry). At least, that was so until Thráin cleared his throat.

Thorin looked up with a hopeful smile. “Want to play?” he asked, scooting backwards to make room in case his father was of a mind to climb in and join him.

Thráin was not. “No, I’ve…got news.”

The lad’s ears certainly pricked up at that. There was news flying round the Mountain constantly, but rarely was it for him. Twenty-year-old princes were not often embroiled in politics either at home or abroad. "Ooh, have the mares been delivered of new ponies? May I ride them? Once they’re cleaned up?”

“That’s not 'til springtime,” Thráin shook his head, but silently thanked the Maker that his son had provided him with some basis for conversation. “But speaking of the mares…you know your Ama?”

Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, Thráin felt he was doing a rotten job of explaining the impending arrival of a new child to his son. Thorin cocked his head and looked up at him confused. 

“Aye,” he nodded slowly. “But Ama doesn’t like horses.”

“Never a truer word was spoke,” Thráin muttered, rolling his eyes. Honestly, for all Freya was fierce as a lion when it came to…well, most things, even breathe the word  _horse_  around her and she put up her hands and looked for a place to hide. “Anyhow. You know how the horses’ll be delivered of foals?”

“Oh, aye!” Thorin brightened up. “I’m to have the pick of 'em for my own, that’s what Udad said!”

“Your own?” Thráin asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Mmm-hmm,” Thorin replied. “I want the pony to live in my room, may I? If I take care of it and feed it and brush it and pat it?”

“No,” Thráin answered at once, thinking of the havoc that wound ensue if his wife heard tell of this plan. “No, you can’t - but…you’ll be sharing your room all the same - ”

If possible, Thorin looked even more delighted, “A PUPPY?” he shrieked, uncharacteristically loudly. “I TOLD DWALIN I WANTED ONE 'COS HE WANTED ONE, BUT HIS AMA SAID NO AND HIS DA SAID MAYHAP AND WE COULD SHARE AND I’D TAKE SUCH GOOD CARE OF - ”

“No!” Thráin shouted over him, crouching down perilously close to the edge of the tub. “No ponies, no puppies - by the Maker, lad, have you lost your senses? Your mother would have both our hides if - ”

“What if she didn’t know?” Thorin asked hopefully, sitting up on his knees and hoisting his head up over the edge so he was looking his father in the eye. “If it was a secret?”

“Then she’d shave our heads before she’d have our hides,” Thráin predicted grimly. “Nah, you’re to have a brother or sister. Your amad’s expecting a baby. So you’ll have that.”

Thorin’s brow furrowed. He frowned slightly and sat back down with a little splash.

 _Here it comes,_  Thráin braced himself for the tears and the screaming - and the swats Thorin would earn for carrying on so. 

“No, thank you,” Thorin said quietly, going back to his boat.

“What?”

“No, thank you, I’d rather not,” Thorin said, submerging the boat under the water again. “I’d like a puppy or a pony and if I can’t have those, I don’t want a baby. You can’t ride a baby. Or fetch.”

Both of those things were true, but Thráin was a little concerned that his son was under the impression that once a dwarfling was Made, it could be un-Made quick as that. “Well, I’m afraid you haven’t much choice, lad. As your mother’ll be delivered of one whether you want it or no.”

“Oh,” Thorin said, looking slightly deflated. “Alright, then. When?”

“In a year or so, perhaps a little less,” Thráin estimated. “Plenty of time to get used to the idea.”

His son - eldest child, now, not  _only_ , which would take some getting used to on Thráin’s part - took the information in and sighed contemplatively. Well, at least there hadn’t been tears…though Thráin was a little underwhelmed by the experience. He had been expecting tears. 

“You can play fetch with a baby,” Thráin said suddenly. “In a way. When Balin was about five or so, if you asked him to fetch a thing for you, he’d do it. Stopped after a bit, but it was a novelty for a while.”

Thorin wrinkled his nose, “ _Five_ , though. What’ll I do with them 'til then?”

“Eh, not much,” Thráin shrugged. “But in a bit you’ll have a playmate. That’s something, eh?”

“I suppose,” Thorin replied quietly. Then he held his arms up and said, “Help me up, please? The water’s cold.”

Thorin really was old enough to drag himself out of the bathtub, but considering the water everywhere, Thráin thought he might as well lend a hand. It wouldn’t do for him to fall and crack his head. He wrapped the boy up from top to toe in a towel and let him pad his way out into the main house where Freya was waiting. 

“Well, what do you think?” she asked Thorin, glancing warily up at Thráin as he followed behind. “About the baby?”

Thorin smiled up at her, hugging his towel closer round him. “Ada says I can teach the baby to fetch,” he declared, then marched himself into his bedroom to dress for sleep. 

Freya stared at her husband. “You told him  _what_?”

Thráin raised his hands defensively, “I did what I could - I talked him down from wanting a pony in his bedroom to accepting a new baby. You ought to be thanking me.” 


	16. Bedtime (Fundin&Dwalin Kid!Fic)

“Story!" 

Dwalin really needed a lesson in politeness. Take Thorin, for instance. If he’d been the one staying the night, he would have shyly walked up to Fundin, a book in his hand and whispered, "Story?” with a sweet, nervous little smile. 

Likely there would have been a, ‘please’ thrown in there for good measure. Not so with Dwalin. Dwalin, in his plodding linguistic development, had not discovered the question yet. 

“Story!” he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, a picture book held high (and upside down) over his head. “Story! Story! Story!”

“SHUT UP!” 

Apparently, both his lads needed a thorough going-over when it came to manners. Trouble was, when there were two, Fundin wasn’t sure which lad he ought to discipline first; he was inclined toward Dwalin tonight. This sort of behavior would have been rather dear if it came after his bathtime. It was less charming when the lights had been snuffed and everyone else in the household was trying to get a decent sleep. 

Well. All but two. There was the aforementioned mannerless child, who actually heeded his brother for once and proceeded to demand, “Story. Story. Story. Story…” in a loud whisper. And Fundin’s absent wife who was presumably cheerfully locked away in the scriptorium with her pens and range of colored inks, far from the repetitive pleadings of her younger child and the irritable bellowings of the elder. Fundin couldn’t complain - shouldn’t complain. For how many evenings had he spent on duty in the Guard while she tended the children on her own? He ought not complain, but he rather wanted to. 

“Dwalin, you’ve had a story,” Fundin replied with more patience than he thought he had in him. “Balin read to you. Go back to bed.”

“No!” Dwalin shook his head, hair swishing all around in a tangled fluffy mop - and Fundin had  _just_  got through brushing it. “YOU!”  
  


“DWALIN I SWEAR UPON THE AXES OF OUR ANCESTORS - ”

Sighing and resigning himself to sleeplessness, Fundin got up and shut the door that separated his room from his son’s; Balin would be off to the apprentice guards’ dormitories in a few years, it would do everyone some good. “Let’s let your brother have his sleep, eh?” Fundin requested, scooping Dwalin up, book and all in one arm and depositing him on the bed. Dwalin, correctly assuming that he was about to have his own way, crawled up and sat against the pillows like a little king on his throne, setting the book down beside him and patting the bed as though he was graciously saying,  _Here, dear father, beloved servant, performer of my will, here is your task, I am sure you will fulfill it with honor._

“You’re spoilt, did you know that?” Fundin asked rhetorically. Dwalin just beamed at him. Well, spoilt or no, he had the most gilt disposition of any child Fundin had ever encountered. Always smiling and giggling, happy to be anywhere - except in his bed when the time for sleep came around. There were times when his father thought he’d trade in on Dwalin’s cheerfulness if it meant it’d be easier getting him to go to bed and stay there. 

Dwalin patted the bed again, scooting over on his bottom to give his father ample room. The thing of it was - the truly  _awful_  thing - was that he was such a sweet child that it was awfully hard compelling oneself to discipline him. After all, what was he really asking for? Another story. Another biscuit. Another five (or ten or twenty) minutes to stay awake and cuddle before bed? Was it really  _so_  bad? Was Fundin really being put out  _that_  much?

Not enough to do anything about it. Obediently, Fundin got into bed and picked up the book. Not content to sit beside his father and let him have all the fun, Dwalin crawled into his lap and flipped the pages for him, until he stopped somewhere in the middle of the book. He pointed imperiously and said, “Go!” then sat back against his father’s chest, waiting for Fundin to begin.  

It was  _not_  one of the books Balin had been reading to him, which generally featured nasty trolls, gruff, but kindly ogres, and brave dwarrows who walked amongst them. For a brief, panicked moment, Fundin blinked a few times, certain he’d forgotten how to read. Then he realized the problem.  

“Ah, what about another one?” he asked, laying the book aside. It had been  _years_  since he’d sat down and tried to read the speech of Men. Why couldn’t Dwalin have brought him a book in steady, proper runes? 

“No,” Dwalin corrected his father and picked the book back up. “Go, Da. Story!”

“I don’t know this one,” Fundin replied, squinting at the text and the pictures. It looked as if three bears had gone on an outing. Well. That was an interesting start. Not in the least because the bears were fully dressed, walking upright, and appeared to be taking a meal with them in a straw basket.

“Papa Bear,” Dwalin pointed at the largest of the bears, who seemed to be sporting a mustache. “Mama Bear.” This one had a pair of tiny spectacles perched on her snout. “Baby Bear.” That one was naked, which at least had some basis in the world as Fundin knew it. 

“You seem to have the gist of it,” Fundin said. “Why don’t you read it to me?”

“No,” Dwalin shook his head emphatically. “ _Story._  Da, you read.”

Fundin sighed. Squinting down at the page, he decided it was best to get it over with; better by far to kill with one blow than to waste time hacking a thing to pieces. “Alright. Er. One… _Once_ …in a…clock. Nah, hang on, Once upon a time - there’s the bugger - there live three bears. Right. So far, coming along nicely…”

Dwalin looked up at his father, momentarily confused. The commentary was new, but if it prolonged his story, the child had little to object to. 

“There was Papa Bear - as you said, very good, lad - Mama Bear and Baby Bear. There they live in a…house small? Small house. Sounds better like that. They lived in a small house in the forest.” Fundin paused here and snorted, “Typical Men, can’t even imagine a bear’d rather live in a solid cave than one of their lodgings. Anyhow. They lived in a small house in a forest and one day they…I’m assuming that says they went for a walk. Since that’s what the picture’s got them doing. They went for a walk and while they were…walking, a…”

Dwalin helpfully turned the page and pointed at an illustration of a Mannish child with long yellow hair happening upon the bear family’s cottage.

“A…child,” Fundin said, though he thought the word in question was more specific than that. “…just stumbled upon their house? And went in? Without knocking? Right, in the first place, I think the townsfolk’d be a wee mite more shocked that  _bears_  had their own place, nevermind wearing eyeglasses. And it’s against the law to go into a place that’s not your home without being invited. Remember that, lad.”

Impatient, Dwalin jabbed his finger on the book, silently imploring his father to read on. Fundin stumbled through a bit more of the story, but quickly grew more and more incredulous. The little vagabond proceeded to help themself to the bears’ breakfast, sat upon their chairs and finally got quite comfortable in the youngest bear’s bed.

Dwalin seemed utterly unsurprised by any of these, turning the pages and pointing when he thought his father had gone on too much of a tangent. By the end, Fundin firmly placed his hand against the book’s covers and closed it. 

“Nah, listen here, let me tell you what became of the Man - the child was  _eaten_ , either that, or  _mauled._  Bears are dangerous and I don’t want you getting ideas that they’re to be trifled with or played with, you understand me, lad?”

Dwalin clearly did not understand. “No, Da,  _story._ ”

“It’s a rotten story, I don’t know who got it for you - I’ll bet it was your Uncle Haldr,” Fundin replied darkly. “I’ll have a thing to two to say to him when next I see him.”

Dwalin tried to open the book again, but Fundin shook his head and placed it on his bedside table, out of reach. Dwalin looked at his father, looked at the book and promptly burst into noisy tears.

“WHY DON’T YOU GAG HIM?”

“BALIN GO TO SLEEP!” Fundin shouted through the door. At that moment, as if summoned by a helpful sprite, his wife walked in, clearly taken aback by all she saw and heard. 

Dwalin, the little traitor, who had been all too happy to climb up into his father’s lap earlier, suddenly bolted across the bed and took a flying leap at his mother who was not too shocked to catch him. “What’s all this?” she asked Fundin.

“Your brother’s trying to get our son maimed,” he said, which, even as the words were coming out of his mouth, he knew was not a thorough explanation.   
Dwalin’s tears - if, indeed, there had been any real tears at all, Fundin suspected this was one of those, 'I’ll screw up my face and shout’ style of fits - dried instantly and he shouted, “STORY!”

“I WISH YOU WOULD GET EATEN!”

“Balin!” Dóra strode over to the door, Dwalin on her hip and poked her head in. “That’s enough of that, go to sleep! You’ve lessons in the morning - ”  
  
“I can’t sleep if - ”

“If you’re shouting at your brother and listening to every little goings-on under the Mountain? I don’t doubt it. Off you drop, dearest.” 

Dóra, looking only slightly frazzled informed her husband that she was putting Dwalin to bed. “He only fusses like this when he’s tired,” she muttered to herself, then asked Dwalin, “Whatever are you doing up, hmm? Don’t tell me you’ve been giving your father a hard time…”

Five minutes later she was back and, as Fundin predicted, expected answers. “What’s all this about Dwalin being eaten?”

Fundin pointed an accusing finger at the offending book. “The story in there - did you get it from Haldr?”  
  
“No,” Dóra said, picking the book up and studying it. “I purchased it myself in Dale. What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s ridiculous!” Fundin exclaimed, before remembering that he had two children in the next room over who were trying to sleep. “And dangerous. Encouraging children to steal food off bears - " 

Dóra’s mouth puckered a little and he was immediately conscious of the fact that she was trying not to giggle. Presumably at him. "Hmm. Dangerous.”

Fundin huffed and folded his arm across his chest. “Well.”

“No, no, I understand,” Dóra placed the book on the bedside table as she proceeded to get dressed for bed. “Wouldn’t want him getting ideas, sneaking into the homes of the local bear population - how many are there again? Here in Erebor, I mean. I do hope they were all thoroughly examined by the Mountain Guard, it wouldn’t do to give everyone fleas - ”

“Right, right, I…got a bit carried away,” Fundin admitted, turning down the blanket beside him so she could crawl in. “And I might’ve gotten the story the wrong way round, I don’t…it’s been a while since I’ve done much reading in the common tongue.”

“I could always - ” Dóra began, then paused, thinking a little better of offering to tutor her husband. “Well. Why don’t I handle the storytelling? Or next time, just select another book. We’ve got dozens.”

“He wanted that one,” Fundin replied, snuggling down in bed and drawing her close as he could to him. 

“Ooh, I’m sure you could dissuade him,” she insisted, lifting her chin to kiss him. “Big strapping guardsman, like you.”

“Hmm,” Fundin mumbled against her mouth. “Not so sure about that.”

“Not to worry. I have every faith in you. You’re very talented.” 


	17. Babysitting II (Thrain&Balin Kid!Fic)

Some matters required delicacy - dwarves were not naturally given to delicacy, but the fact remained that there was a time and a place for tact. This was no such time.

“I don’t know how much plainer I can be,” Thráin said to Balin firmly. “You can’t have the apple - this is  _my_  apple, in the first place, and in the second, you can’t chew it. You haven’t got any teeth.”  
  
Balin seemed to believe that his lack of teeth ought to be no impediment to his partaking in whatever meal the grown dwarves around him indulged in. Thráin blamed the child’s parents; they fed him scraps off their plate the way his mother did with dogs and Thráin did not see how that did the dogs or the dwarflings any favors. It just made them greedy.

Balin hoisted himself up to stand next to Thráin’s knee, gripping his trouserleg and resumed his position, this time standing and pointing at the apple like a sentinel.  
  
Pointedly, Thráin raised it to his mouth and took a bite. Balin’s eyes followed the bobbing of his chin and his fat little arm raised itself higher.   
  
“Eeeeeenghhh!” he implored.  
  
“No,” Thráin shook his head. “You can’t have any. You can’t eat it, you’ll choke. I’m not your uncle Thór, you know. Or your adad. They’re not here. Everyone’s gone away.”  
  
Everyone worth knowing, that was. All the King’s Guard. And half of Thráin’s own family too and even the ones who stayed were gone. In a way. Whenever his father went off to war, his mother spend more time drilling the Mountain Guard and when she’d worn them all out, she left the Mountain entirely, off to the surrounding forests and beyond, sometimes, to hunt larger game. She came back with a grim expression and her fingernails caked in blood. Thráin was still too young to join her and, privately, was pleased by that. He was sure he’d never be able to keep up. Sigdís rode like the wind, always, especially when half the Guard was off at war. Thráin thought his mother figured if she rode fast enough, she might catch up with them.   
  
Balin’s own father was gone and his mother had absented herself for a few hours to get some work done in the scriptorium. Scratch, scratch, scratch with the quill. She wrote about as quickly as his mother rode and though Dóra never left the Mountain if she could help it, she still worked a lot for a ‘dam with a husband away and a baby to mind. Then again, so long as there were dwarves about to look after Balin, why shouldn’t she get some extra work done?  
  
Thráin hadn’t volunteered to mind Balin as such, Dóra asked him if he had an afternoon free and he said  _aye_  before he asked  _why_ , which she was probably counting on because she was clever. Then she said that she needed someone to watch Balin and since she  _knew_  he didn’t have an excuse, he wound up saying he would. And so here he was, trying to eat an apple in peace.  
  
Balin had toys littered on the floor all around him, Thráin upended his toy chest before he’d started in on the fruit, but Balin seemed to find him eating more interesting than his bear or his carts or his blocks.   
  
Thráin finished the apple and got to his feet. Balin wobbled a little when Thráin stood up, but held fast to his trousers. Then, Thráin was stuck with a conundrum - he could peel Balin off his leg, which would make him cry, or he could start walking and let Balin topple over which would also make him cry.   
  
“Get off,” Thráin said, grabbing hold of the excess fabric bunched round his knees and tugging it out of Balin’s hands. At least, he tried tugging, but the little lad had a firm grip. “Come along, I’m not leaving the core to rot.”  
  
His mother ate the core and all when she had an apple, but Óin told him that apple seeds were poisonous to Men and while it would take a few troughs of Mannish poison to make a dwarf sick, he still thought he’d rather be safe than sorry.   
  
Balin did not know anything about poisons, being that he was both too young to understand or  _care_  about the myriad dangers of the world. Must be nice, Thráin thought, only a little resentfully. Balin was oblivious to both poisoned apples  _and_  Thráin’s annoyance. He just held on to his leg and stared up at him with a hopeful expression on his face.  
  
Thráin cursed and bent down to pick Balin up. That put Balin closer to the apple, which made him happy, but Thráin could hold him with one arm and keep the apple well out of his way with the other. “Ha. You think you’ve won. You’re so stupid.”  
  
Balin just smiled at him, confirming all Thráin’s condemnation. Intelligent dwarves did not  _smile_ when they were told they were stupid. Thus, Balin must be stupid.   
  
“Your Ama won’t like that,” Thráin cautioned him, crossing to the bin and tossing the apple core away. Balin watched it bounce until it settled at the bottom, then he leaned over as if he wanted Thráin to put him down. “I’m not letting you play with moldy food - this is for your own good. And it’s as I said, your Ama won’t like it if you turn out to be stupid. Then  _again_ , she married Uncle Fundin…sorry, I shouldn’t say rude things about your adad. Especially when he isn’t here to defend himself.”  
  
Not that Uncle Fundin would launch into a spirited defense. He was very honest about his scholarly aptitude, which amounted to less than nothing. Thráin was easily, as he saw it, the smartest dwarf in his family, but that wasn’t saying much. “Oh, I suppose Óin’s alright. But he’s smug. Auntie Maeva says that he’s smug and she’d know him best, her being his Ama and all.”  
  
“Ba!” Balin chimed in.   
  
“No,  _you’re_  Balin,” Thráin corrected him. “I was talking about Óin. You remember him? He’s red-headed. He used to be taller than me. And now he’s not so he’s got to find other things to brag about. Don’t brag, Balin, no one likes a braggart. Besides, folks who think highly of themselves tend to be arseholes.”  
  
“Ahhhhh!” Balin parroted.  
  
“That’s right,” Thráin nodded. “Arseholes. And if your Ama asks where you learnt that, blame your Uncle Haldr, alright?”  
  
“Aggggggg,” Balin drawled - then drooled, all over Thrain’s fingers.   
  
“Eurgh!” Thráin exclaimed in disgust. “That’s disgusting. I don’t know what your parents see in you.”  
  
Balin only smiled.  Then, laid his head, drool and all, on Thráin’s shoulder and yawned. Thráin mopped up his wet hand with the hem of his shirt, frowning down at the top of Balin’s head of black curls, following the line of his snub nose and his plump cheeks.  
  
“I don’t understand why dwarves like babies at all,” he complained, tromping over to the sofa and settling in, so Balin could take a nap on him. 


	18. Brothers (Thorlin&Halin Dis/Dwalin!KidsAU)

Thorlin left his lessons early. Well…not  _early_ , as such, he just left before everyone else. He didn’t mean any disrespect toward Uncle Balin, but the acquisition of a new book about famous fallen beasts did not hold the same sway over him as it did the others.

“The illustrations are very fine,” he said, opening to a page that showed an enormous wolf, three-inch fangs dripping with saliva.

Thorli could see the pictures were in fact, fine. He also saw the tiny stamped text that already made his head ache and eyes dry up, like a puddle on a hot day.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, stepping away as Lúfi shot past him to have a peek. “Da’s cooking supper tonight - he needs all the help he can get.”

Uncle Balin chuckled and Thorli grinned at him, then turned heel and walked out of the schoolroom quick as he could go without running. And without asking his younger brother if he wanted to go along with him. There wasn’t a point, Halin would have the book read cover to cover before supper was begun, he was sure.

It wasn’t  _fair_ , he thought when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself. He was the elder brother, he was supposed to be better than Halin at  _some_  things - nay, scratch that,  _most_  things. But as far as he could tell, he and Halin were fairly evenly matched.

It was what came of being born five years apart, he thought unhappily. Ama and Da ought to have waited. Out of courtesy to him.

“If Halin ever winds up taller than me, I’m trading families,” Thorlin announced when he got home. As he predicted, Da was crouched in front of the fire, a mess of eggs, meat and dough on the kitchen table behind him. Thorli toed his boots off and deposited them by the door. The road had been muddy and he didn’t want to track dirt all over the new-swept floor. The last time he’d done that, Uncle Frerin told him he’d have to clean it all up - with his  _tongue_. “What’re you making?”

“Food,” Da grunted. “And what’s this about changing families? We’re not good enough for you?”

“No, you’re alright,” he sighed. “But I want a proper little brother.”

“And what makes a proper little brother?” Da asked. He gestured to the table and requested, “Stir some milk into that.”

“What are you making?” Thorli pressed. The dough was in a bowl along with crumbled sausage and cheese. The beaten eggs were in a separate bowl and he eyed the concoction dubiously.

“Got it off Missus Thyra’s ma - the recipe. She said it’s easy - if I remember it right…”

Da trailed off frowning at the fire, which he seemed to be trying to build up awfully specifically. Da was good with fire, Thorli didn’t doubt he’d light it alright. As for remembering recipes, well, that was a different matter. Thorli didn’t bother asking why Missus Sayra hadn’t written it down - Da wasn’t any better with letters than he was.

“But what’s the trouble with your brother?”

“Nothing,” Thorli said pointedly. “Only…only aren’t little brothers supposed to be worse than big brothers at everything? So I can teach him? Bilfur teaches Lúfi all sorts of things and Fíli and Kíli - Fíli  _reads_  to Kíli, ‘cos his Da don’t know how.”

“Doesn’t know how,” Da corrected him.

“Right,” Thorli said, mixing the cream in with everything else, watching it go soupier and soupier. There wasn’t any chance of him ever reading to Halin. Halin had, in fact, offered to read to  _him_  when he thought Thorli was going to slowly, but his brother just scowled at him until he left him alone. It was embarrassing to always be the last one done reading a text, the last one done copying, but he’d rather take a week to get through a book Halin could read in an hour than ask his brother to read it to him. “But anyhow, Halin’s nearly as tall as I am - he’s just as  _heavy_  as me, anyhow. And we’re both of us bad at archery, and he’s  _smarter_  than me and it isn’t fair because I need to be better than him at something. Otherwise it doesn’t matter that I’m his big brother. Is it supposed to look like this?”

Da sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, but whether he was more annoyed that supper looked like milky meat soup or that his eldest son was a failure at being a big brother was anyone’s guess.

“I have no idea,” he said, cocking his head down at what was potentially their supper. “We’ll bake it up just the same. And you’ve got some things you’re better at than your brother. Seeing, for instance. The Maker knows Halin’s got a spare set of eyes.”

“He’s got spectacles now,” Thorli said dismissively, though he could well remember the evenings Halin spent with his nose pressed up against a book or his slate, coming away with the tip covered in chalk. “So we’re even. Well…I could  _hide_  them - ”

“You could,” Da agreed. “But it’d go badly for you. You wouldn’t anyway, you’re a good lad.”

Thorli shrugged. He supposed he was, but what of that? Everyone he knew was good. Except for Ori’s elder brother Nori. He was a cracked opal, a bad egg, a rotten apple, depending on who you asked - well, unless you asked Ama. She just said Nori had a naughty streak, which didn’t sound so awful, when it came right down to it.

“It’s just no  _fair_ ,” Thorli muttered and Da put a hand on his head and was about to say something, but they were interrupted by the sound of the door crashing open and Halin bursting in on them, chattering a mile a minute.

“Did you know that Ancalagon the Black was over thirty-five  _thousand_  feet tall?” he asked. Halin hadn’t checked to see whether anyone was home, but he decided that anyone in his family (immediate or extended) would be equally excited to hear about comparative dragon sizes.

“I didn’t, no,” his father said, ruffling Thorli’s hair as he did so. “Take your boots off, lad, floor’s just been swept, you’re trailing mud.”

Halin untied his bootlaces as he continued gabbering, “That’s four-hundred and twenty <i>thousand</i> inches, or, six-and-a-half  _miles_ , or - ”

“Five-thousand eighty…three? Fathoms?” Thorlin ventured. He wasn’t much of a reader, but he knew his sums fairly well. He wasn’t  _entirely_  stupid - though Halin had an uncanny knack for making him feel that way.

“Actually, a fathom’s a measurement of depth, not height,” Halin corrected him, dumping his boots next to his brother’s. Thori’s had been neatly lined up, but Halin’s knocked them over, and streaked the leather with mud. “But I suppose you’d be right, if Ancalagon was a sea and not a dragon. Ooh, Da! Did you know that his name means ‘Rushing Jaws’ in Elvish? Probably ‘cos he could swallow up a whole kingdom in one gulp.”

“Mmm,” Da said and Halin decided he wasn’t really listening. In an effort to actively engage his audience (he wanted to be a teacher someday, like Uncle Balin), he ran at his father and clamped his mouth around his elbow.

Dwalin chuckled and patted his head. “Go wash up, supper’s nearly on, your Ma and uncles’ll be back soon.”

Halin stopped trying to devour his father’s arm and he trotted off toward the door, nearly colliding with Thorlin as he did so.   
  


“And put your boots back on,” Da said, turning back to the mess on the kitchen table.

Halin had, indeed, been about to run out the door barefoot and as the day was muddy, it would have been fairly disastrous if he wanted to eat while supper was still hot. Thorlin didn’t wait for him and was furiously working the handle of the water pump outside to get a steady stream going so he could wash his hands.

Halin ran over and held his grubby, ink-stained palms out expectantly, but as soon as Thorlin was done scrubbing under his fingernails, he left off pumping the water and it soon slowed from a gush to a trickle.

Right, perhaps that wasn’t the action of a ‘good lad,’ but if Halin could figure out how many miles tall a dragon that lived centuries ago was, he could work the water pump on his own. 


	19. Asthma (Fili&Ori Modern!AU)

It was dusty in the cellar - not that his mum and uncle hadn’t done a  _fantastic_  (emphasis on the ‘astic’) job when they went on a DIY kick two summers ago and took to the formerly wartime bunker-chic hole beneath their house with paint buckets and carpet nails, but the fact remained that it was a poured concrete foundation over packed dirt and there was only the one tiny window that might as well not be a window with the dirt from the back garden piling up against it and, well, they might’ve assumed  _something_ bad would happen. Eventually. 

It wasn’t pollen season - that was the explanation Ori gave when he stopped wheezing long enough to put a sentence together. He had allergies and asthma and the usual list of ailments that affected little boys with big glasses and large vocabularies. And he wasn’t ill. If it had been pollen season or if he’d been getting over a cold, he would’ve brought his inhaler with him, but neither Ori nor Ori’s mum thought that a sleepover in his friends’ converted cellar would cause his airways to wage war and his lungs to tighten and of  _course_  Kili slept through the whole thing. 

Fili woke up to an odd grunty wheezing that made him thing the neighbour’s cat had got in and was having a tussle with a hairball. But it kept going on and finally Fili sat up and he saw Ori sitting up and it turned out Ori was the one in the middle of some kind of apoplexy and then Fili  _stood_  up and felt stupid because what exactly was he going to do?

Nothing, apparently. Ori made a semi-frantic, ‘sit down’ gesture and Fili complied, sitting down on top of Ori’s sleeping bag, squashing his legs in the process, which, in retrospect, probably didn’t help matters, but it was air that was the problem, not blood and…actually, that wasn’t the most useless thing he’d done all night. No, that came next. 

“Just a small-town girl,” Fili sang, very quietly, rubbing Ori’s back since that’s what you do when someone’s choking, you rub their back. ‘Living in a lonely world. She took the midnight train going anywhere…”

Ori looked at him, first with skepticism, then amusment. He actually gave a little huffing laugh, which seemed to be an improvement. Well, if you can laugh, you can breathe, at least a bit, which is better than nothing.

“Just a city-boy, born and raised in south Detroit,” Fili continued since he was well in it now, and if Ori was smiling, that was good. “He took the midnight train going anywhere.”

It was a long song, which was good since it took Ori a bit to collect himself and stop sounding like that damned cat. Actually my the end, Ori was able to join in, whisper-singing, “Streetlights, peop-le-le-le-le-le,” until they both coughed because twelve-year-old boys just weren’t meant to hold notes very long.

Fili tugged Ori’s arm and nodded toward the staircase. “Come on. We can sleep on the sofa, it pulls out.”

Ori nodded his agreement, glancing at the peacefully dozing Kili. Fili rolled his eyes, “He’ll be fine, come on.”

For some reason he took Ori’s hand and held it all the way up the stairs. Probably to make sure he didn’t topple down, just in case he really  _had_  cut off all the bloodflow to his legs.

“Journey?” Ori whispered, grinning in the dark.

Fili squeezed his hand and grinned back, “Eh. Seemed the thing to do.”


	20. Dog Days (Disa&Thror Kid!Fic)

The kennels were almost as fun as the stables.

_Almost_ , because one could ride the ponies in the stables, but Dísa was not allowed to ride any of the hunting dogs and she’d tried loads of times. Dísa couldn’t see why she wasn’t allowed, they were big enough; the dogs had been brought when the Mountain was first being settled, to go and search the hills if any of the scouts were lost. Now they were used for hunting and ostensibly for guarding, but Mistress Hilsíf, who looked after them, said they’d just as soon slobber a would-be robber to death than anything. 

One of the bitches just had a litter of pups and just as soon as Dísa got herself kicked out of her lessons for being a nuisance, she went straight aboveground to visit them. There were eight, fat, squirmy things that had only started opening their eyes a few weeks ago and stumbling around their mother like squat, hairy drunkards. Now they were a bit bigger and more lively; they’d run right up to Dísa when she crouched by the edge of her pen, balancing on their hind legs and wagging their stubby tails.

She gave them all pats on the head and scratches behind the ears, letting them lick her fingers and nip at her knuckles. One very insistent pup, with a big black patch over his eye, kept coming back for more pats and, when Dísa was quite sure no one was looking, she lifted him right up into her arms and let him lick her nose. She sneezed and the noise attracted Mistress Hilsíf. 

“Awfully young to be an apprentice, aren’t you, milady?” she asked, standing over her with her hands on her hips. “What’ve you done this time?”

“Nothing!” Dísa cried, hugging the pup tighter too her. He took that as his cue to snuggle with his head on her shoulder and settle in for a nap. “That’s just it, we were doing the succession from Father Durin and I got stuck all the way back in Khazad-dum. I couldn’t remember anyone between Durin VI and Thorin I, only that I thought his common name must’ve ended in -in since they always  _do_  and Master Skalri got all cross and said I was cheeky and ordered me out. Thrór laughed.”

“Hmm,” Mistress Hilsíf hummed, a thousand unspoken thoughts in that little sound, but Dísa did not hear them, absorbed as she was in attempting to make the pup open his tired eyes and do a trick for her. “Not just yet, m'dear. He’s a wee bit too little still for that - why he still needs to stay alongside his mother for the time being.”

“I don’t think she’ll miss him,” Dísa said, patting his head since he wasn’t going to do anything but nibble on the hem of her tunic. He didn’t even try to tug-o-war it from her when she pulled it away from his mouth. “She’s got others.”

“Tush,” Mistress Hilsíf cluckled her tongue. “All mothers care for their little ones just the same.”

This time it was Dísa’s turn to hum, only hers came out more like a snort. She was sure there would be rows tonight, with Ama shrilly scolding her for giving backtalk while Da nodded and frowned behind her like the angriest marionette at a faire. And Gróin would stand close enough for Dísa to see him, but far enough back that their parents wouldn’t hear him muffling his laughter into his sleeve. 

“Not her - not for him, I mean. Come along, how’s he to bait a bear? He’s too soft and roly-poly.”

Mistress Hilsíf smiled like she knew a secret, “There’s no telling how a body will turn out when it’s this small. Why he might be the fiercest hunter the Mountain’s ever known!”

The pup yawned, exposing his pink tongue and tiny teeth that pricked like needles, but didn’t break the skin. Dísa favored the kennel master with a skeptical look. “Aye. And I’ll be a great scholar who writes long books and smells of dust and ink.”

“You never know,” Mistress Hilsíf shrugged. “You and he may surprise us.”

“I don’t like surprises,” Dísa declared, standing up and dusting dog hair off her trousers. “I like to know what’s what. May I come back and visit the dogs again tomorrow?”

“If you’ve time,” she nodded. “After your lessons.”

“I’ll have time,” Dísa predicted grimly. “Just you wait - I told you, I’m not one for surprises.”

Perhaps Mistress Hilsíf had more faith in Dísa than Dísa had in herself, or perhaps she was busy and forgot, but she wasn’t in her usual place in the kennels. Apart from a few apprentices cleaning out crates and stalls, the place was nearly deserted. 

Her little fat friend with the patch came skipping toward her (wobbling, really, like a jelly). Dísa picked him up and he sniffed around in her pockets which once contained a bacon sandwich pilfered from breakfast, but she’d eaten it already - that was how she’d gotten herself booted out of the schoolroom. This time, she thought Master Skalri had <i>really</i> gone round the bend. She wasn’t munching on nuts, so she wasn’t making noise. She was just hungry - growing dwarrowlasses needed food, didn’t they? 

But then he looked her up and down and said that she didn’t seem in danger of going hungry and everyone giggled - they stopped when she turned round and glared at them though. She  _was_  the biggest one in their classroom, after all, Master Skalri hadn’t been  _wrong_  about the fact that she was fed up well enough. Still, he didn’t have to say it like it was an insult. 

Today she’d kicked herself out and shoved past her master to get out the door. He’d called after her to stop, but she started running, barreling through the crowds and going up and up until she was outside, squinting in the sunshine. She doubted her Master would follow her there; he didn’t look as if he’d seen the sun since his last Name Day. 

“Stupid genealogies, stupid literature,  _stupid_ Elvish,” she whispered into the pup’s ear. “And   _stupidest_  Common Speech. And 'stupidest’ isn’t right anyway - it’s 'most stupid.’ Like me. I don’t care. I’m going to be a warrior when I grow up, did you know? I’ll be the best there is and I won’t need to read and write for that. My axes’ll talk for me and that’s enough. Isn’t it?”

The pup licked her chin. 

“Thanks,” she said, hefting him into her arms and kissing his head. He was soft and warm, even if he was useless, Dísa liked him. She looked at his brothers and sisters, running around, snarling at each other, getting into fights over worn out balls and lengths of rope. She admired their spirit, but the second she returned their friendly sibling to them, he lay his head down on his forepaws. Poor little misfit; he’d never stand a chance against a bear. 

The mother wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Maybe she was being exercised after giving up so much of her time and energy nursing her little ones. Dísa hoped she was having a good time; she knew she’d be running mad if it was her stuck in a box getting pawed at for weeks on end. She wondered how she could possibly keep track of them all, or tell them apart, the little pups tearing at each other. She wondered if she’d notice that one of the lot was missing. 

Probably not, Dísa reflected. Not with him being such a quiet, complacent little thing. Probably no one would miss him. Probably no one would ever remember there had been eight pups instead of seven. 

_Anyway,_  she thought as she reached down into the caged off place where the pups were playing and scooped up her little friend,  _he needs a different place to live. He’s not useful to anyone down here._

 

* * *

 

“I love him,” Thrór declared passionately, hoisting the pup into his arms and snuggling him close, despite the little one’s whimpers of protest. “I love him already, though I just met him. What’s he called?”

“Nothing at all, if you don’t drop him,” Dísa scolded him. “Not if you hug the stuffing out of him.”

Thrór dropped the pup immediately. He flopped on the floor, then scurried away, hiding under a sitting room table. “Sorry. But what’s he called?”

“Dunno,” Dísa shrugged. “Good-for-nothing - he won’t even snap at his brothers and sisters, he’ll be a miserable hunting dog. That’s why I saved him.”

‘Saved’ might have been overstating the matter. She’d absconded with the pup from the kennels because he was a friendly little thing who’d taken a shine to her. And she assumed he’d be better off being petted in her home than failing to measure up to the standards of Erebor’s kennelmasters. It would be embarrassing for him. 

Thrór tutted and trotted over to the table where the pup was hiding. “Tush. He’s not a good-for-nothing! That’s not nice. Not nice to call, him, I mean. Come here, you, come out, I promise I won’t squeeze you.”

“He doesn’t trust you,” Dísa declared haughtily, crossing her arms over her chest. The pup made a liar of her by tentatively poking his head out and giving Thrór’s hand a lick.

 

“Aww, there’s a lad,” Thrór smiled approvingly. “Hmm. What about Cuddles?”

“Eurgh! No!” Dísa exclaimed, screwing her face up. “Nah, he’s already to squashy and sweet, he needs a fiercer name. Like….like…Terror. Then folks’ll know him by his reputation and be too scared to fight him, so he won’t have to worry about actually terrorizing anyone.”

“That makes sense,” Thrór agreed. Then the pup rolled over and let Thrór rub his belly. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and he closed his eyes in evident satisfaction. “Awww…no, it won’t work. He’s too dear. What about Dearie?”

“EURGH,” Dísa repeated, loudly, for emphasis. She flopped down on the floor beside Thrór and buried her face in the carpet. “NO! That’s awful. If we’re going to give him a name that sums up what he truly is, we ought to call him Sleepy for all he does is sleep. And eat. He wobbles when he walks. Like a jelly.”

“Jelly!” Thrór shouted, startling Dísa and the pup. “We’ll call him Jelly! I like it, it’s what he’s like, and it’s not cruel. What do you think, Jelly? Like it?”

The pup, seemingly energized by Thrór’s voice, stood up and yipped, wagging his tail enthusiastically.

“Jelly’s not bad,” Dísa said, turning it over in her mind. Jelly. It was the best of the lot, so far. 

“You’re so lucky,” Thrór sighed, watching Jelly bound away to gnaw on a table leg. “My parents’d never let me have a dog.”

“Well, neither have mine,” Dísa shrugged. “I never asked them.”

“What?!” Thrór’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Really?”

“I thought they’d say no,” she explained. “So I just did it anyway. Got him anyway. No one’ll miss him, I told you, he’s useless. ‘Least here he’ll have friends.”

“But what if they don’t let you keep him?” Thrór asked worriedly. “What if they make you take him back? What if he misses us?”

Dísa smiled. No need to think about that, she was about to explain. She had a plan. The pan consisted of hiding the pup from her parents for…oh, a week, mayhap more. During which time she’d feed the dog and exercise him. She knew a lot about caring for dogs from hanging about the kennels. If they didn’t notice him, then surely they’d let her keep him, seeing how responsible she was, how little trouble Jelly was. It was a perfect plan. It would set his mind at ease to hear it. 

Unfortunately for Dísa, he never would. Just as Jelly made free to relieve himself all over the floor beside the table, the door of her family’s suite opened and her little brother Gróin walked in just in time to see the mess and witness his sister and the heir to the throne scrambling away from the spreading dark stain. 

“I’m telling!”


	21. Snuggles II (bb!Dwalin Kid!Fic)

“I just need a moment,” Thrór said, pausing at their apartment on the way to court to scoop Dwalin up out of his cradle and snuggle him against his chest, breathing in the scent of his sparse hair. “Ah. That’s a restorative.”

“Here,” the Queen Under the Mountain requested after a long day spend doing nothing - which she found more draining than the most vigorous exercise. She tucked Dwalin up in one arm and frowned at him. “Still too small to toss in the air?”

When her sister-in-law informed Dísa that Dwalin was still too tiny to bear being airborne, she handed him back to her.

“Ooh, I want another one,” Gílla sighed, the first time Dóra brought Dwalin to the library with her (he was two weeks old and slept the entire time as he was handed around to no fewer than twenty-five dwarves, including staff and patrons). 

“Do you want him?” Balin asked, a touch too eagerly for Dóra to believe he was joking.

“Now, dearest,” she said, patting his hair, “you know you can’t give your brother away.”

Balin raised both his eyebrows in a skeptical look, as if he thought his mother was acting unnecessarily dim. “I wasn’t going to give him away. I was going to <i>sell</i> him. Of course.”

“Of course,” Dóra sighed and shared a look with Gílla, who had three children under fifty and knew well the trials of finding one of them stuck in a laundry basket by one of their siblings. 

But soon, whether by reputation or sheer coincidence, the demand for time spent with Dwalin spread - to Balin’s delight, and his asking price for the purchase of his little brother steadily increased with the demand.

“Ooh, what a sweet little gem!” passers-by would exclaim. “May I hold him?”

Unless she was terribly busy, Dóra complied, as it was customary and Dwalin did not seem to mind. Fundin did, a little. 

“He won’t know us for his parents,” he griped after a long day on guard duty where he spent so little time with either of his sons that he was considering barring the door against friends who might get it in their heads to drop by and visit the baby. Dóra was feeding him and feeling just a trifle crowded as Fundin hovered in front of her, waiting impatiently for Dwalin to finish that he might snatch him away the moment his mouth left his mother’s breast. “He’ll go home with anyone - good way to get himself snatched.”  
  
“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” Dóra replied, rolling her eyes. “Honestly. Dwarves stealing babies - have you been too much in the company of Men?”

That stilled Fundin’s tongue, but did not find him from scurrying away to the nursery with Dwalin when there was inevitably a knock on the door.   
Dwalin bore the role of being the most popular dwarf in Erebor tolerably well. He had an easygoing disposition and was just as happy to be held by a family member as he was any member of the general populace. 

“I need your baby,” Elísif announced one evening when she burst in to Dóra’s office. “I’ve had a bad day. Give him over.”

Dwalin was rocking in a little cradle beneath his mother’s desk and Dóra obligingly pushed him out the other side with her foot. Elís immediately grabbed him and held him, squeezing him tight until the tension left her shoulders. 

“If you weren’t so fat, you wouldn’t have liked that at all,” Elís informed him as he drooled all over her beard. “I can’t abide a baby who isn’t fat, you’ve done very well for yourself. Your brother agreed to sell you to me for fifty sovereigns, how do you feel about that.”

“He feels the asking price is too low,” Dóra spoke up for him. “And don’t encourage Balin, he might think he can <i>really</i> sell him.”

“There’s plenty who’d buy,” Eliís said, reluctantly returning the baby to his mother. “Alright, I’m off - I feel better now!”

Dóra lifted Dwalin’s arm to wave after her. Dwalin tilted his head back to look at her and smiled. 

“Oh, you don’t fool me for a minute - you love all this attention, don’t you?” she asked, bending her neck to kiss him. He tangled one of his hands in her beard and yanked.  "Ouch. Why do you only do that to me, hmm? If you pulled another dwarf’s beard, they’d not be so inclined to cuddle you, would they?“

Dwalin’s only response was to drool again, in a greater quantity, this time. 


	22. Another Lifetime (Frerin!Lives AU)

It wasn’t that Halin wasn’t worried, he was. It was just that he wasn’t as worried as his brother. Because, to be perfectly honest, he was fairly sure that no dwarf made worrying into as much of an art as Thorlin. 

“Just look at the facts,” he implored, staring up as his brother wore a canyon into the forest floor for pacing. “This fellow seems to be alright, eh? In one piece and hale and all. Stands to reason the…well, our _own_  Thorin is in one piece and hale and all.”

“But _where_  is he and how do we get him back?” Thorli demanded.

Halin paused, mouth twisting into a very small frown. Of course, it would figure that the one time his brother ever asked him a question, he wouldn’t know the answer. How vexing. “Well, I don’t know. It’s…magic, isn’t it? It seems to be anyway, and that’s the purview of wizards and elves and not our doing unless it comes to weaponsmithing, doormaking, or runecrafting.”

“The what?”

“What what?”

“The _what_  of wizards and elves?” Thorli growled, his voice low and cross-sounding, as if Halin was trying to coax him into asking stupid questions on purpose.

“Purview,” Halin repeated, belated realizing he had to explain his choice of word. “Er. It’s their…speciality. It’s a skill they possess, a skill they concern themselves with, a knowledge that’s theirs uniquely, something within their experience to perform or underst - ”

“Got it, thanks,” Thorli cut him off, not sounding very grateful.

“Well, you _asked_ ,” Halin muttered, trying not to sound petulant. Da said if he got petulant, he had to walk back West. Only he hadn’t used the word petulant, he said ‘tetchy,’ but it amounted to the same thing. It was only because he was the youngest of them, Thorlin got tetchy all the time, but no one threatened to send him home, just because he was a measly fie years older.

Then Thorli huffed and puffed like a wolf in a faery story and stomped off back toward the camp. Halin would have stayed just where he was, if only to ensure that he didn’t look like he was following his brother like a stray dog after a butcher, but he hadn’t anything to do on his own and the one book he’d been allowed to bring on the Quest was back in his bedroll so he couldn’t even settle in for a good read.

The Un-Uncle Thorin was still looking at them all as if they were Orcish guards, about to attack at any moment and Halin felt awfully bad for him.

A sharp whistle caught his ear and he turned to see Uncle Frerin beckoning him _back_  toward the line of trees. For a group of dwarves, they certainly did a lot of conversing behind great big leafy trunks.

“How’s the lad?” Frerin nodded toward Thorlin.

“Worried,” Halin replied, then asked in a lower voice, “How’s yours?”

“Ha,” Frerin replied - it was a reply, not a real laugh, he may as well have spelled the sound out for all the mirth that was in his voice. “He’s not _mine_ , of course, but…oh, he’s badly off, anyone could tell. Let me guess, Thorlin wants to _do_  something.”

“‘Course he does,” Halin rolled his eyes and huffed a sigh. “I told him that magic wasn’t his purview - he didn’t know what that meant, by the way - but he got all annoyed and wandered off.”

This time, Uncle Frerin did laugh. “Well, I’d say that had as much to do with you being a shite than it did with anything else.”

“I was not!” Halin exclaimed. “It’s a perfectly ordinary word.”

Frerin just raised his eyebrows and made a face that clearly was meant to convey the sentiment tha though he loved his younger nephew very much, he also thought he was a shite. And Halin could not but be offended by that.

“Read a book,” he grumbled and Frerin laughed again.

“Oh, but that’s what _you’re_  Made for!” he said, ruffling his nephew’s hair and tweaking his nose. Halin batted his hands away, but Uncle Frerin got him round the shoulders and led him back to the camp. “Come along, let’s look on on those brothers of ours, eh?”

Halin ignored Thorli and instead distracted himself conducting a brief, informal survey. The results were less than promising.

“Preview?” Ama asked, distractedly. “Like a theatrical?”

“No, I don’t,” Da said, then got a gleam in his eye that usually presaged an order to go chop some wood and make himself useful, so Halin just scarpered off to find another test subject.

“What?” Óin asked, “Could you say that again?”

“I don’t care,” Glóin said flatly. “Couldn’t you be making yourself useful somewhere, lad?”

“One’s area of skill,” Mister Baggins said, but as he was a fellow scholar, he couldn’t really be considered as one of ‘the people’ and it was that group that Halin meant to quiz. Just what he was trying to prove he couldn’t really say, but he thought it might improve Thorlin’s mood if he could prove that it was so well-known a word that he hadn’t actually been trying to tease him earlier. 

Halin knew he wasn’t going to be able to escape his father for long and it was sheer luck that he wound up in conversational distance from Un-Uncle Thorin and thought he might as well ask as not. “D'you know what the word 'purview’ means, by chance?”

Un-Uncle looked at him oddly, but no more oddly than most dwarves looked at him when he asked them something out of the blue, so Halin waited it out patiently. “It’s a specific set of skill, unique to a person or people, isn’t it?”

“It is!” Halin exclaimed with a triumphant smile. “Thank you! RIght, Da, I’ll chop that wood now.”

“Don’t need wood,” he said, tossing him a shovel. “We’re making camp, dig a privy.”

Halin’s face fell. Then, he saw Thorlin, holding an axe, making his way toward a few likely-looking dry branches with Ori. His brother caught his eye and smiled and Halin smiled back with a small shrug. Well, he’d improved his mood, at least. Just not in the way that he’d anticipated. 


	23. Master and Pupil (Thrain&Halldora)

“Do you want me to go in with you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Do you want me to collect you at the end of the hour?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“She came very highly recommended.”

 Thráin did not reply at all to his father’s attempt at encouragement. All that meant to him was this dwarf would be the same kind of broad-shouldered, thin-lipped taskmaster that his  _last_  tutor had been.  

It wasn’t  _fair_ , he’d complained to his parents just the night before. His father’s Elvish was abysmal and his mother’s grasp of the languages of that race non-existent. He could speak their fathertongue as well as any dwarf and his Westron was close to flawless. Why should he learn yet  _another_ language?  
  
“To aid your poor old adad,” Thrór said. “You’re far cleverer than I could ever be - and thrice as clever as your Ama, but don’t tell her I said so - and as such, it falls to you to learn all the things we don’t know.”  
  
It was that attitude that brought Thráin here, to a tucked-away office overlooking the scriptorium. The sign on the door was new-stamped, Halldóra Hallthórul, Master of Script.

Thrór raised his hand to knock, but Thráin beat him to it. “You can go,” he informed his father, glancing anxiously at the door. Bad enough he was being sent to another tutor for remedial language classes, he didn’t need his father hovering over him trying to lift his spirits when they were already about as low as they could get.   
  
Thrór bore his son’s dismissal cheerfully.   
  
“As you like, lad,” he said, patting Thráin’s shoulder. “I’ll see you at supper - and I won’t ask you a thing about your lesson…just tell me if this tutor’s to your taste or not.”  
  
“She won’t be,” Thráin muttered under his breath when his father was too far gone to hear him. The door remained shut in his face and he shifted on his feet when no one came for what seemed to be an awfully long while. Maybe she was out. Maybe she’d given up on him before he’d even arrived.   
  
Thráin was debating whether or not he ought to knock again when the door flew open and a little girl said, “Sorry, I was in the midst of rendering a tricky bit of calligraphy and I didn’t want the whole morning’s work to go to waste - I suppose I could have offered it up in sacrifice, but… _ooh_  is it wrong to say I don’t want the Maker to have this one? I suppose all our work honors Him, but I’d rather this one honor Him in the archives, not on the offertory altar - how are you?”  
  
Rapidly, Thráin’s mind attempted to catch up to the flurry of words that had just been thrown at him. His first thought was that this girl was also here for a lesson and he ought to apologize for coming early and wait until it was his turn. Then he looked at her a moment longer and realized that though she wasn’t any bigger than he was, she was older than him - not so much older, but enough to have a beard brushed and braided back into her hair. Thráin’s wasn’t long enough to hold a single plait on his chin.   
  
His next thought was that he’d come to the wrong office or that the master he was seeking was out. Clearly this was an apprentice - and a philosopher? - and he was going to tell his father that he liked this master not at all since she didn’t think that her prince was an important enough person to open the door for. It crossed his mind to say just that to the apprentice, but he lost his nerve and instead replied, “Fine.”  
  
“Splendid!” she said, clapping her hands briskly. She opened the door a little wider and beckoned him inside. “Come in, come in, I’m very pleased to meet you, I hope we’ll get on. The Elven tongues are awfully tricky, I really think you’ve got to have a knack - fortunately, I’ve got the knack, but most dwarves don’t. Have a knack, I mean, or an inclination to learn. And why should they? There’s little cause to encounter Elvenkind on the roadway, they don’t make free with themselves the way Men do. But, alas, it’s your lot to encounter them, isn’t it?”  
  
“Er…” Thráin began, when he was sure she was expecting some kind of reply - it was awfully hard to tell, she’d asked half a dozen questions already, but just barreled on speaking without giving him time to answer. “S'pose so. Erm. What’re you called?”  
  
 _And where’s your master?_  he didn’t have time to add because her reply left him in no doubt that  _she_  was the master. Halldóra, she said. But he could call her Dóra, if he liked.   
  
Master Dóra. A four foot tall skinny little girl who was hardly old enough to plait her beard. Maybe this was a joke, maybe they thought him so hopelessly stupid that his old master assumed he wouldn’t question the absurdity.  
  
Only Master Dóra didn’t seem to think any of this was absurd. She dragged her chair round to the front of her desk and indicated that he should take the one across from her. “Mae g'ovannen,” she smiled at him. “Shall we begin?”  
  
It was the smile that made him sit down. She was little and young and she talked too much for him to be quite comfortable - but her smile seemed entirely genuine.   
  
“Alright,” he said, sitting down on the very edge of his chair. “I’m awful, though.”  
  
“That’s why you’re here,” Dóra replied easily. “Oh! Do you want a toffee? That way, if you really are awful, you can just blame it on your teeth being stuck.”  
  
With the promise of sweets, Thráin sank back in his chair. Maybe he’d come for a few more lessons. Just a few. Even if he didn’t learn one Elvish phrase, if Master Dóra kept up a steady supply of sweets, he might grow to like her.


	24. Faultless (Halldora&Dwalin Kid!Fic)

It wasn’t that she hadn’t  _noticed_. Or that she hadn’t been concerned. Perhaps it was not natural for one who made her life’s work dissecting and recording facts, but Halldóra was just as capable as burying her head in the rubble as any other dwarves when it came to ignoring things that she did not want to be true. 

If she didn’t have Thorin to use as a helpful yardstick, she might have gone on fooling herself indefinitely, but as it was, she could hardly help comparing her own son’s progress in language acquisition to that of his cousin who was not only a good deal more bashful, but three years younger to boot. 

It wasn’t that Dwalin did not speak - though, for the first six years of his life, he communicated largely in smiles, giggles, and occasional shrieks of delight - but he did not speak particularly  _well_. Language was the business of Halldóra’s life - there wasn’t any way she couldn’t have noticed. 

At first she tried to console herself that all children’s speech was a little…convoluted. Slightly garbled. That Dwalin was not any more or less intelligible than any other young dwarfling - she, Fundin, and Balin normally got the gist of what he was saying, even when he mixed up the sounds of his consonants and ran his words together. The latter difficulty she attributed to her influence. She spoke so quickly and Dwalin spent so much time with her, it was only natural that he would emulate his mother in speaking, rather than the slower, more methodical speech of his father. She purposefully did not remind herself that Balin did not do so, when he was younger.

 _At least he’s trying,_  she thought when Dwalin’s ever-insistent cries of, ‘Up, Ama, up!’ evolved to, 'Hold me!’ which was a complete sentence, albeit a short one. And since he was being so articulate - nevermind that he routinely ignored the l-sound at the ends of words - she would comply, pick him up and and give him a good hard cuddle. He was such a sweet lad, so happy. She couldn’t bring herself to scold him, put pepper on his tongue until his language improved, it would only make him cry.

 _Tomorrow,_  she thought.  _We’ll address it tomorrow._  Night after night she made the same vow to herself, but it was forgotten when Dwalin hopped into bed, cheeks pink from his bath, his stuffed bear on his lap, waiting for his bedtime story.   
  
The notion of correction or instruction flew out of her head when he snuggled up against her, wiggling under her arm as she read to him from one of the many picture books on his shelf, some inherited from Balin, others purchased or gifted specifically to him. “What is him doing?” Dwalin asked, pointing to an illustration of a Man crushing minerals to powder as part of a great escape plan from a caved he’d been trapped within.   
  
“Let’s read on and find out,” Halldóra said rather than replying, 'He, not 'him,’ sweetling.’ He was enjoying the tale so much, it hardly seemed fair to pull him out of it.   
  
Was she doing him a disservice? Should she be pushing him? Teaching him? But Halldóra was not a teacher; she knew all too well the damage that could be inflicted by a parent turning instructor to their child. And he was improving on his own, however slowly. He was becoming more intelligible, even if he still pronounced Erebor as 'Eberor,’ into his fifteenth year.   
  
When he looked up at her when she tucked him in nights, when he ran at her at the child minder’s when she’d come to pick him up, when he threw his arms around her neck and kissed her, shouting, “Love you, Ama!” she could not bring herself to find fault in him.  


	25. Good for You (Thrain&Thorin Kid!Fic)

Thráin could not say when it was he started. If one put the question to him, he’d stiffen and mutter that he wasn’t Made for child-rearing, it did not come to him naturally, as smithing had or even as war-making had. As a father, he struggled daily and often made mistakes. It was a business he had no mastery of. 

Yet this was not strictly true. When his eldest child, Thorin, was an infant - though he could bring himself to the brink of a crisis when the child cried - he was a caring enough father. He held his son (carefully, as though he was a blown-glass trinket, precious and easily broken), and as Thorin grew older he even chanced to play with him and nearly ruined his back, letting Thorin take hold of his fingers with his tiny hands as he learned to walk. For the first decade or so of his life, Thorin adored his father and, though Thráin’s own affection was slightly more tentatively bestowed, it was not any less ardent for that. 

 

There was no change in Thráin’s love for his son as he grew older, only the way he manifested it. It all began one day, during the cold, wintery season above-ground when the Mahalmerag festivities began below. It was in the midst of the drumming, with his son seated on his lap, that Thráin’s heart sank into his bowels.

  
Thorin had his hands over his ears and shrank back against his father’s chest to get away from the noise. It was loud, to be sure, Thráin’s ears were ringing, but the sight of his own son attempting to burrow into his beard brought back a memory, long-forgotten. 

 

He might have been a little older than Thorin, but he wasn’t much bigger. He had been sitting upon his own father’s lap, during a similar feast and he too was bothered by the noise. Thrór humored his son, picked him up on his hip - though he was king and it was his duty to oversee the festivities, quite aside from the fact that noise and commotion were things he thrived on - and carried him out into the hall. “There, there,” he said, rubbing Thráin’s back and kissing his cheeks. “All quiet now.”

 

Thráin felt his father’s eyes upon him, peering over at him from beneath brows that were grey now, not black. Silently, his father and king raised his hands slightly, inclining his head at Thorin.  _I’ll take him,_  was the silent offer. 

 

Thráin grit his teeth and shook his head, looking down the table to where Dwalin was sitting perched upon his own father’s lap. He was older than Thorin, true, but only by three years. Hardly any difference at all. He was smiling from ear to ear, tapping the end of his knife against the tabletop in a slightly off beat accompaniment to the music. Thorin had his eyes shut tight against the light, his ears clasped against the nose and Thráin had an awful feeling of what the next sixty years might bring for his son. Being carried out of halls. Seeking out the shadows of rooms that he could not leave because courtesy demanded his attendance. Standing by, silent and afraid, keeping his mouth shut because he could hardly  _think_ in all the din, let alone speak. 

 

Thought of Thorin, grown, perhaps holding a child of his own who would likewise shy away from the noise and the light. Thráin thought of this and could not bear it. 

 

Thráin, very discreetly, pinched the soft flesh of Thorin’s upper arm. His son brought his hands down at once and he whispered in his ear, “Listen, now, be a good lad. Don’t block your ears, the musicians will think you are being very rude.”

 

Thorin looked up at his father with wide eyes. His lips pressed together as if he was about to cry and Thráin braced himself for wailing, which would bring more attention upon them, exactly what he did not want -

 

But then Thorin swallowed and forced his hands by his side. “I’ll be a good lad,” he said quietly. “I’ll be good for you, Ada.”

 

Thráin could not bring himself to smile at him. Closing his eyes against the light, wishing he could block the noise from his ears he sank back in his chair, resting his hands lightly against Thorin’s arms, just in case the child forgot his promise.


	26. Udad (Thror&Thorin Kid!Fic)

“Now I’ve got you all to myself,” Thrór said smugly.

It wasn’t as easy a job as one might think for the King Under the Mountain. Freya was a fierce lass and was quick to scold if she thought a body wasn’t holding her firstborn child just right. But she was asleep and her husband had departed for unknown parts of the Mountain, presumably to get a bit of peace and quiet. He asked his father if he might look in on his wife and baby son, make sure all was well, and Thrór was only too happy to oblige him.

Thorin had been sleeping in his cot, but his grandfather soon changed that sorry state of affairs. He was a little fussy when he woke, but some steady rocking and humming got him to quiet right down and Freya never woke - a double blessing.

“There we are,” Thrór said fondly, holding the little mite close. He was wrapped up in a soft blanket, a few shades lighter than his eyes. Thorin did have a tendency to cross them every now and again, when he was tired and he did so, yawning as wide as his tiny mouth could go. “Blessed thing.”

Good size he was, a nice warm weight - not so large as Dwalin, nay, but that lad could have won a prize for size if he was a piece of game hunted for sport. Come to think of it, he hadn’t imposed himself upon his sister and brother-in-law recently. It wouldn’t do to become so besotted with his grandson that he forgot he had another little dwarfling standing by to play with.

On the other hand, Thorin was a very easy child to love. Just darling, Thrór thought proudly as he stroked his soft black hair and kissed his little nose.

“We have such times to look forward to, don’t we, lad?” he smiled as Thorin yawned again, settling into his arms, sleepy and comfortable. “What do you say we have a little walk? I’m sure you’ve missed your cousin…”


	27. Burden (Balin&Dwalin Kid!Fic)

He wasn’t so great, Balin mused when he happened to glance at his little brother over the top of his book.  

 

In the first place, he was slightly useless. He could hold his head up, aye, and he’d mastered the art of getting his hands in his mouth, but those were not great accomplishments, all things considered. Actually, he was a trifle disgusting. If he wasn’t dirty, he was wet, he drooled  _constantly_ , keeping the chin and front of his clothes in a perpetual state of damp. It was a wonder he hadn’t grown mold. 

 

Dwalin was currently exhausting his limited repertoire of skills; he was lying on his front, head held up on a barely-there neck, fingers crammed into his mouth as he sucked away enthusiastically. Balin lowered his book and examined him. Truth be told, it wasn’t that he had a  _neck_ , as such. Just another roll of fat under his head, to match the ones on his arms and legs. Even his fingers were fat, the backs of his well-gnawed hands dimpled and so soft that if you poked them, your finger sank in and made a dent. 

 

Laying his book aside, Balin sat down on the floor, examining his brother yet more closely. Dwalin looked up at him and smiled around his hand. Balin kept his distance; he had been slobbered on so many times in the past few months that it was a wonder  _he_  hadn’t gotten moldy. Ada only asked that he watch Dwalin for a few minutes, not pick him up and Balin had no intention of working above and beyond the terms of that verbal contract. 

 

He did poke him a bit, his finger sinking into the soft flesh on Dwalin’s side, currently covered in a remarkably dry button-up article of clothing that resembled long underthings. He kicked his legs, cloth covered feet thumping against the floor. 

 

“Roll over,” Balin commanded. The puppies in the kennels might have been a bit bigger than Dwalin, but they were similarly fat and fond of drooling. Was it too much to hope that they were equally apt to learn tricks?

 

It was. Dwalin just continued chewing on his hand, wetly. Then, even  _that_  became too much for him and he lay his head down on the carpet, wiggling a little. 

 

Balin backed up, looking round to see if his father was about to return. Dwalin did not cry much, but when it did it was usually because he was hungry (which Balin could do nothing about), or he wanted to be held. As Ama had just fed him before she left for court, it was unlikely that he was hungry again, but Dwalin didn’t like being left by his lonesome.

 

Sure enough he started fussing. Balin groaned.

 

“Shh!” he said. “Ada’s coming back any minute, can’t you wait?”

 

Dwalin could not wait. The fussing turned to whining (again, like the puppies, and it was incredible that he was so stubborn about refusing to learn a single trick), then to crying. 

 

“Fine,” Balin said, crossly, heaving his brother up off the floor. “But just so you know, I’d rather not.”

 

Dwalin did not seem to care. Just as soon as Balin got him settled in his lap, he cooed as if all was right with the world - and promptly shoved his fist back in his mouth. 

 

“You’ll chew it all down to nothing,” Balin predicted, adjusting Dwalin so he was sitting up - that way, when he started drooling again in earnest, it’d be more likely to drip down his front than onto Balin’s sleeve. “You won’t be able to dual-wield. No! No! Stop that!”

 

Dwalin’s free hand found Balin’s fingers, which he was slowly, but surely dragging toward his mouth. He had a very firm grip, but Balin’s was stronger and he managed to extricate his finger’s from the babe’s hand, though, of course, they came away wet. 

 

“That is not a very nice thing to do,” Balin admonished him. “No one will want to be your friend if you spit on them - it’s very rude, you know. You’re lucky I’m willing to forgive you.”

 

“Aren’t you sweet?” Ada said, sounding entirely too amused - it was not  _funny_  that Dwalin got drool on everything, as far as Balin was concerned it was a serious defect. Ada crossed the room and sat down beside his sons on the carpet.

 

“Are you talking to me or him?” Balin asked, suspecting he knew the answer. Everyone thought Dwalin was sweet, which he did not understand. Occasionally he smelled absolutely awful. 

 

“You,” his father smiled, ruffling his hair. “You’re very good with him, a fine elder brother.”

 

“I’d rather you’d gotten me a dog,” Balin complained. He felt it was alright to complain to his father since his mother had been the one who had to go to all the trouble of birthing Dwalin, she might be offended if he said he would rather she’d had a litter of puppies than a single baby dwarf. 

 

“Oh, he’s not so bad, is he?” Ada asked, smiling. “Look at him, he loves you!”

 

Balin was slightly skeptical about that. Dwalin was looking up at him, but there wasn’t anything particularly loving in his gaze. Actually, he looked sleepy. “Do you want him now?” he asked his father. “I don’t want to have to change clothes if he makes a mess.”

 

Ada dutifully picked Dwalin up, settling him on his shoulder, hardly caring that his tunic would be soaked, “That’s alright lad,” he said, talking to Dwalin now. “I don’t care if I have to change clothes for you.”

 

Balin got up, looking himself over for any unexpected wet spots Dwalin might have caused. Feeling he was clean enough, he picked up his book and went back to his chair. Ada chuckled and got up himself, patting Balin’s hair again as he passed him by. “Alright, I can see we’re not wanted.Thanks for looking after him - like it or not, you really are very good with him.”

 

Balin sighed; he supposed every dwarf had his burden to bear.


	28. Sleepover (Dwalin&Thorin Kid!Fic)

Dwalin’s bed was Thorin’s very-most favorite place to fall asleep.

It was comfier than his bed, by a long way. The downy mattress was softer, he though, and the pillows squishier. It was also warmer because Dwalin was like a bedwarmer only made of dwarf and not metal and he had Porridge the bear and Thorin had Woof the wolf so their stuffed friends were happier because they had each other and Thorin and Dwalin were happier because they had each other.

Mister Fundin would toss them into the bed after baths and that was fun because he could throw them very far and the bed was soft to land on and he usually responded with a laugh and another toss when they crawled out of bed and begged him to do it again and again.

Then when they were sleepier - but not  _too_  sleepy - Missus Halldóra would come in and read them a story - two, if they were very good - and sing them a song. That usually made Dwalin fall asleep, but Thorin forced himself awake for the very best part.

“Goodnight sweetling,” Missus Halldóra would whisper, kissing Dwalin on the head. “I love you.”

Then she would kiss Thorin too and pat his hair or, if she saw that he was still up, give him a big hug. “Good night, Thorin. I love you.”

“Night-night,” Thorin would sigh. If he remembered, he’d hold up Woof and he’d get a kiss good night too.

Every so often, Dwalin would wake up when his mother kissed him. Then, not wanting to be left out, he’d reach over and give Thorin a hug and a slightly wet kiss on the cheek. “Night, Thorin. I love you.”

Thorin was only too happy to reciprocate. “Night, Dwalin. I love you too.”

With his wolf hugged against his chest and his thumb in his mouth, Thorin drifted off to sleep; no doubt, Dwalin had the very best bed ever.


	29. Joyous Name Day (Fili)

Something big and heavy and warm thumped into bed beside him, rousing Fíli from a blissful slumber.  _Mam?_  he thought sleepily, rolling away from the bulk, burrowing beneath his pillow. Maybe Kíli, if he jumped in fully clothed…

“It was a hot and sweltering day,” his uncle’s deep voice, thick with smiling, rumbled in his ear, "pennies melted in your pocket…“

 

"Mmmrgfff,” Fíli muttered, which translated to, ‘Uncle Thorin, please get off me, I’m trying to sleep.’ His uncle ought to know this, having lived with him for seventy-five years, but he saw fit to ignore his nephew, planting a kiss on the back of his head, rather than tip-toeing out of the room to let him enjoy a bit of a lie-in.

 

“Joyous Name Day,” Thorin said, patting Fíli on the back of the head, ruffling his hair fondly. “Up you get, lad, the sun’s full up and your Ma can only hold your brother off the sausages for so long.”

“I don’t think you’re giving Mam enough credit,” Fíli mumbled, rolling out of bed and onto the floor. Joyous Name Day. Right. It’d be a damned sight more joyous if he could have a bit of piece and quiet.

 

Thorin laughed at him and left. It made Fíli smile despite himself; Thorin was always in a good mood when there was someone else’s party to go to. Funny thing about his uncle, he never wanted so much as a honey cake when his own Name Day rolled around, but he was only too happy to buy the beer and strike up the gittern whenever anyone else’s came along. 

 

By the time he’d had a bit of a wash in the basin, put on a fresh shirt and trousers and gave his hair a brush, Fíli felt a bit better - and somewhat puffed up, to be honest. It  _was_  his Name Day, after all and a very important one too. He could go off and sign a contract (well, in theory, he was still indentured to his uncle, but he could sign a LITTLE contract), could marry if he chose (he did not choose, but he could if he wanted to!) and now little ones ought to call him Mister Fíli (not that they would or that he’d ask them to, but if he was a prickly sort of they wanted to be extra-polite they would). 

 

No sooner had he walked out of his bedroom than his mother swept him up in a hug that nearly lifted him off his feet. She covered his face in kisses, muttering well-wishes, eyes full of tears. “Oh!” she exclaimed, smacking his shoulder, a contrast to her previous affection. “You make me feel so <i>old!”</i>

 

“If you’re old - ” Uncle Thorin began from the skillet, but Mam hushed him. 

 

“You were born old and that’s a fact,” she said, taking Fíli by the arm and leading him to the kitchen table where, as promised, there was a plate piled high with black sausage and pork sausage and square sausage, under which could barely be spied a pile of toast and eggs soaking up all the fat. “Tuck in.”

 

Fíli only just lifted a link to his mouth when Kíli slammed into him from behind, strangling him in an eager embrace. “Joyous Name Day!” he shouted into Fíli’s ear. “Open my present, first, will you?”

 

Mam clouted him on the bum with a spoon, “Come along, that’s not 'til later.”

 

As if expecting the rebuke, Kíli only sighed grandly and grabbed a plate, filling it until it was nearly as full as Fíli’s own. “Probably for the best,” he said before he took his seat across from him. “It’ll put all the others to shame, maybe you’d better save it 'til last so you don’t have to pretend to be excited about all the tin and dross you’ll be getting.”

 

“Ey!” Thorin exclaimed, kicking Kíli under the table. “I got him sommat a bit better than tin, mind your tongue.”

 

“I didn’t get you anything at all,” Mam said in a airy way that meant she was lying. “Totally forgot the day - I didn’t even do your breakfast, that was Uncle’s work.”

 

“Good to know you care,” Fíli winked at her, earning him a gentle little kick. The breakfast <i>was</i> good - none of their line were exactly great Masters of the stove, but they could handle a simple breakfast, so long as they used enough butter to make it all taste good. It <i>was</i> good, the sort of hearty meal best taken before a hard day’s work, but as it was a special day, not a one of them got much work done at all.

 

Mister Dwalin was by far the  _worst_  offender. Unlike his mother, Mister Dwalin  _did_  lift Fíli off his feet off his feet when he spied him coming down the road to the forge and said - with suspiciously bright eyes - that the time had gotten clear away from him because he could’ve sworn Fíli came up no higher than his knee and needed a hand held when he was walking about. 

 

“Only when I’m leaving the pub,” Fíli grinned, hardly embarrassed at all by the ribbing or the emotion. Made him feel a bit special to know that Mister Dwalin cared so much and it was always funny to imagine what the village would think if they saw him getting all choked up over Fíli’s coming-of-age. Big old wax-hearted fellow he was. 

 

The forge was busy that day, but with a steady stream of visitors, not customers. Bilfur, Mister Bombur’s eldest, somehow managed to skive off his apprenticeship enough to spend the whole day perched on the end of a water barrel, listing off increasingly absurd things Fíli could do now that he was “old as them Mountains.”

 

“You could rob a caravan of its silks an’ work off the time in prison,” Bili concluded, at the end of a very long list that included such ambitions as, 'Open up an account at the bank,’ and, 'Get a license to brew your own beer.’

 

“Young master Bilfur,” Thorin said, “remind me in two years’ time to warn any merchants passing through to keep an eye out for red-haired lads with sticky fingers.”

 

“Ah, but Mister Thorin, I never said as that’s what he  _ought_  t'do, only that he  _might_  do it!” Bili protested. 

 

“If your lad’s going to embark on a life of crime, then I might as well be on my way.” Mister Balin was leaning against the stall’s countertop, a sheaf of parchment in his hands. “Joyous Name Day, lad.”

 

“Thanks Mister Balin,” Fíli replied. “Take it back, though, Mam said no presents 'til nightfall.”

 

“Not a present, just a formality,” Balin said, unfolding the paper and fiddling with a quill he’d stuck behind his ear. “I thought we’d best have it done now, I don’t want anyone spilling beer all over it.”

 

An oath of fealty. One of the points Bilfur missed in his list of, 'Things one can do when one’s of age.’ Probably ought to have gone in there and a bit higher too than, 'go to prison for committing a crime.’

 

Fíli hardly glanced it over. Maybe it ought to have been a bigger moment, pledging himself to honor his uncle as King Under the Mountain, to give over his sword and self in defense of their home…but other than remembering to lock the door when he left the flat in the morning, thus far his life had not led him to contemplate the greater sacrifices a child of Durin’s line might be called upon to make. It was the easiest thing in the world to set his signature at the bottom.  _F_ _íli, son of Thorin._

 

“As if I’d give you a stack of papers for your Name Day present,” Mister Balin said when he was done, sniffing indignantly. When he started chatting with Fíli’s mother, Dwalin leaned down low and whispered in his ear, “Don’t be fooled, lad, it’s just what he  _did_  get you, only some old bookbinder put a cover on to fool you - ”

 

“Thorin,” Balin called out cheerfully. “Smack my brother, you’re closer - he’s running off at the mouth, like he does.”

 

Thorin happily complied and Dwalin smacked him back, knocking him into Bilfur who fell into the water-barrel, splashing Kíli as he went in. 

 

“Ey!” Kíli called, lobbing a wet rag at Bilfur’s head. 

 

“T'weren’t me!” Bili shouted. “Blame your uncle - nah! Blame Mister Dwalin!" 

 

"That’s right!” Mam called gleefully, “Blame Mister Dwalin!” And she got him right in the face with a ladleful of water from the slack tub. 

 

“Ooh, you’ll  _pay_  for that, lass!” Mister Dwalin roared, wiping the oily mixture out of his beard. 

 

“You’ll have to catch me first,” Mam shouted, hiding behind Thorin. 

 

Dwalin snorted, “You think I have any qualms about going  _through_  him?”

 

“I’ve got a defender now,” Thorin replied sedately. “Come along, Fíli, prove your loyalty.”

 

“Oh, come along!” Fíli howled in mock reluctance. “I’m young yet! Too young to throw my life away fighting Mister Dwalin!”

 

“Not so young!” Kíli cried with glee. “Go on, have at it!”

 

Dwalin groaned at that, “Now you’ve got me 'tween a Mountain and an avalanche! I can’t give the lad a thrashing on his Name Day, wouldn’t be right.”

 

“Ah, now my own pride’s on the line,” Fíli countered. Bili had extricated himself from the barrel, but Fíli gave him a hard shove back in, “This is all  _your_ fault!”

 

“Alright, alright!” Mam said, coming out from behind her brother. “I call a halt, no one’s fighting anyone - ”

 

“Too right,” Mister Dwalin said, grabbing her quick as winking and throwing her over his shoulder like a sack on washday. Fíli knew his mother could’ve fought him off if she wanted to, but though she shrieked, she made no move to get down. “Into the drink with you!”

 

It was a sight that really oughtn’t be missed and everyone took off running to the wide part of the river nearest the smithy. Despite Dís’s loud protestations, she allowed herself to be tossed into the river, to the joy and laughter of the spectators. Shaking the water out of her eyes, she stood, waist-deep in the river looking awfully smug for a dwarf who just got dunked. “All according to plan. It’s hot!”

 

“Not as hot as the night Fíli were born!” Kíli laughed, then, doing a rather horrible impression of his uncle, continued, “'It was a hot and sweltering day, pennies melted in your pocket and it was on such a day, in such a heat, that Fíli decided to come into the world - ’” 

 

“Uncle Thorin tells it better,” Fíli said. “Just not when I’m trying to sleep.”

 

“You’re <i>always</i> trying to sleep!” Kíli complained. “It’s why you got your own bed, it’s always, 'Kíli, stop kicking me,’ or, 'Kíli, give the blankets over,’ or, 'Kíli, stop talking - ’”

 

“There’s an idea,” his brother exclaimed. “Kíli, stop talking!”

 

Behind them, there was another great splash; it seemed Mister Dwalin had extended a hand to help their mother out and she took the opportunity to flip him over her shoulder and drag him into the muckiest part of the river.

 

“Now look what you’ve done!” Fíli shouted. “I’ve missed it!”

 

“You two are a disgrace,” Thorin said, walking to the water’s edge, to drag them both to dry land. “Not fit to be seen.”

 

That was a mistake - though, perhaps, a calculated one. His sister seized on arm and his cousin, the other and they each of them got Thorin soaked through, looking like a drowned cat when he got out of the water. 

 

Shaking his head, getting water everywhere, Thorin looked up at his nephews with an expression the unaware would call menacing, but which they knew to be teasing. “Best lock the shop up early,” Thorin advised them. “We make a poor showing - might as well proceed to Mister Bombur’s, I suppose there’s nothing else to be done.”

 

The lads didn’t need to be told twice. Quick as they could, they ran for the smithy, pulling down the awning, locking the door behind them. A goodly number of dwarves stopped them in the streets to bid Fíli all the glad tidings of the day, so they actually arrived at Mister Bombur and Missus Thyra’s flat at the same time as the alleged grown-ups who were meant to look after them. 

 

“Slow-coaches,” Mam chided them in a sing-song way. Fíli was just about to come up with some witty retort about how he was simply so well-thought of that he  _had_  to stop and chat with everyone they came across else they’d feel  _slighted_  when he was literally bowled over, face in the dirt from the force of an embrace that could only have been provided by one Broadbeam lass.

 

“Joyous Name Day!” Catla, Bili’s younger sister, shouted. “I’d have tried to get the day out, if I thought I could manage it! But I couldn’t so here I am now!”

 

“Mbgmnnbl,” Fíli said through a mouthful of dirt and pebbles, which translated to, “Thanks, you shouldn’t have, lass.”

 

“'Course I should!” she said, getting up and hauling Fíli with her. “S'not every day a friend comes o'age! Muhudel Mahal! What’re you going to do now? Ooh, you could open an account - ”

 

“We’ve been through this with your brother,” Thorin cut in before Cat could give another list. “He’s already signed a contract.”

 

“Ooh!” Cat exclaimed, looking Fíli up and down. “Actually…huh. I don’t know, I 'spected there’d be more of a change.”

 

“Don’t look to him to get any taller,” Kíli said, standing up on his tip-toes to emphasize his own height.

 

“Aye, you’re taller, you weed,” Fíli poked him in the stomach. “But I’m better looking!”

 

“You’re  _all_  of you handsome lads and lassies,” Missus Thyra sang out, throwing open the door; she could resolve a conflict before it began out of habit. “Come in, come in! Punch is on!”

 

Once again, Fíli was gathered up in an onslaught of affection. Both Missus Thyra and Mister Bombur were great huggers, but all of their little lads and lassies were just as eager and smaller, so while two clung to his arms, two more could take hold of his legs and yet more grab him about the waist.

 

“JOYOUS NAME DAY!” they shouted as one, little Varla added, “Mister Fíli!” for good measure. Fíli swept her up for a kiss and told her nevermind the 'Mister’ bit, but thanks all the same. 

 

“Who’s  _Mister_  Fíli?” an arch little voice asked from the doorway. “I’m sure I don’t know any such.”

 

“Gimli!” Missus Hervor shouted, annoyed. “Mind your manners!  _There’s_  the handsome lad!”

 

If being hugged by all seven of Mister Bombur and Missus Thyra’s younger children at once was an adventure, it was  _nothing_  to being hugged and kissed by Missus Hervor; Fíli was sure his cheeks would be bruised. “Joyous Name Day! Ach, it’s enough to make a lass feel  _ancient_  - ”

 

“That’s just what I said!” Mam exclaimed.

 

“Oh, hush!” Missus Thyra tutted. “For I’m the elder of the pair of you and don’t  _I_  feel it today!”

 

“You’ll be even older in two years, Ma!” Bili reminded her and she tweaked his nose. 

 

“Where’re the presents going?” Mister Glóin asked, always one to put business before hugs. The parcel he held was quite large, not as wide as it was long, but it did take up a bit of space in the doorway. 

 

“You make a better wall than an archway, Glóin, my love.”

 

Missus Irpa had come, along with Dori and Ori who held the wrapped present. Big and lumpy, Fíli suspected at once that it was a jumper. He couldn’t be disappointed, Mister Dori was a wizard with a pair of knitting needles. 

 

The house filled to bursting, all his friends and family came, from Misters Bifur and Bofur, to his great-great uncle Gróin and Auntie Maeva. Dinner consisted of roast pork with potatoes, turnips, applesauce, and mushroom gravy, all his favorites - and he got the pick of the meat. Conversation centered largely around reminiscences about the scrapes Fíli’d gotten into when he was younger…and maybe not so much younger.

 

“Remember last winter when you walked me home, wearing my own muffler?” Ori asked, shaking his head. “Which I’ve never won back!”

 

“I’ll be sure to bet it next time we play cards,” Fíli promised him.

 

“And this time, I’ll be the one to win it from you and keep it,” Gimli predicted, grinning. “You can’t play betting games, Ori, you’ve a face like warm wax, every little impression shows plain as torchlight!”

 

“Fíli’s tricky,” Cat said. “Just sits there, smiling away, most times he hasn’t got a thing in his hand all the while!”

 

“Just like his Da,” Bofur observed. “Never knew when to bet against him or not, he looked happy with everyone hand dealt!”

 

“That’s the opposite of Thorin, but the end’s the same,” Glóin announced. “Looks as if he’s been handed the worst of the deck, then it turns out he’s got four-of-a-kind on the first deal!”

 

“I’ve still got that hunting knife I won off you last summer,” Thorin reminded him.

 

“Aye, I  _know_ you have!”

 

Pudding was even better than supper. Missus Thyra’s kin had baked up a stick toffee cake for him, loaded with nuts and cinnamon, glazed over with sugar and cream. Fíli took a healthy portion for himself - he did like sweet things and it was  _his_  Name Day, so no matter if Mister Balin took one bite and made a face, claiming he could feel his teeth plotting to make an escape. 

 

“More for me!” Fíli announced happily, splitting a second piece with his brother who also shared his tolerance for all things sickeningly sweet. The talk of his Da hadn’t put him in a melancholy mood, but it did make him think. Mam was washing down her cake with whiskey, swirling it about in her mouth to get some of the taste out. Must’ve been where he’d come by the sweet tooth. There was a part of him that wondered - would always wonder - what it would have been like to have him here, laughing along with everyone else, bidding him good day, sharing stories. But he didn’t feel he was missing anything; there were plenty of dwarves to pick up the slack left by his passing.

 

Presents next. The lumpy package turned out to be a new leather undercoat and not a jumper at all - Missus Irpa worked it herself, having some experience tanning. She claimed the smell wouldn’t come out from under her fingers, but it was worth it since she was sure he’d look fine in it. 

 

The littlest ones had pooled their pennies to buy him a box of hard sugars, shaped like gemstones and he thanked them heartily for the present, promising that he’d eat the lot by week’s end. Mister Bombur and Missus Thyra had more than done their duty by him by hosting and cooking, but they still gave a small present of a fine set of wooden combs, wide set as his hair was thicker than the rest of his family. 

 

The gift from Mister Glóin and Missus Hervor turned out to be a curious scabbard, fitted for two swords. 

 

“That’s only a third of it,” Mister Glóin informed him. “Open your Ma’s gift next.”

 

It was a beautifully worked short-sword, carved in with runes for strength and protection. Its twin turned out to be his Uncle Thorin’s gift and though they’d been smithed by two different hands, they were a matched set.

 

“Better than tin, eh?” Thorin said. “Do you like 'em?”

“Sure I do,” Fíli said, grinning from ear to ear. “I’ve just got learn to dual-wield!”

 

“And you shall,” Mister Dwalin informed him. “My half of the present - I told you Balin got you a stack of papers? My half’s where the fun comes in.”

 

It was indeed a book, of sword technique, especially written for those dwarves who favored two swords as their weapons of choice. 

 

Kíli’s “best ever present” turned out to be a wrapped piece of paper, upon which his brother had scrawled,  _This paper is good for two pints of Bildr’s best, to be purchased by K_ _íli, son of Thorin, for Fíli, son of Thorin at any date upon which_ _the former is possessed of funds enough to procure pints for the latter._

 

Fíli laughed 'til his stomach hurt. Ah, Kíli. 

 

“Well, I haven’t your happy face,” Kíli shrugged. “I’m no good at cards.”

 

“That’s because you say, 'Oh, no!’ when you’re dealt a bad hand,” Cat was kind enough to inform him. “Keep your mouth shut, you’d get someplace.”

 

“Ha!” Fíli laughed. “Mark me, it’ll never happen…but thanks, one and all. This has been grand!”

 

“You’re very welcome,” his mother said, embracing and kissing him again. “Happy to do it.”

 

“'Course we are,” Thorin echoed. “You’re a good lad. We’re proud of you.”

 

“And we love you! All of us,” Hervor said emphatically.

 

“Ah, you’ll make a lad turn red,” Fíli said, grinning. “But go on, see how scarlet I can go.”


	30. Storytime (Bombur)

“Tell me a story, Da,” Catla implored, climbing into her father’s lap and tugging on his beard to get his attention. 

Bombur had been well occupied spooning mashed potatoes, mixed with honey (odd combination to his mind, but that was how little Alfur liked his spuds), into his youngest son’s mouth. He maneuvered his arm so Catla could sit without being knocked off and she held out her hand for the spoon. “Let me help!”

“No, thank you,” Bombur replied quickly. Catla was the most impatient dwarfling he’d ever met and though she didn’t mean any harm, he was confident that she’d make Alfur gag for forcing the spoon in too much. “Why aren’t you asleep, then?”

“‘Cos I want a  _story,”_  she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Tell me one!”

“I don’t think I will,” Bombur replied easily, mopping up a bit of potato off Alfur’s chin. “In the first place, I haven’t heard - ”

“PLEASE TELL ME A STORY!”

“Hush,” he said mildly. “Your brothers are sleeping. But as I said, I there wasn’t a please to be heard out o'that gob o'yours and in the  _second_  place, I hasn’t many stories in me. You’ll be wanting your Uncle Bofur for that.”

“But it’s too late to go visiting!” Catla protested and right she was. It was time for good little dwarflings to be in bed, but though she was very dear she was by no means 'good.’ “And I wants a story!”

“Hush, now, I’m not joking,” he said. “I amn’t cross with you for staying up, but I’ll be sore vexed if you wake them brother’s o'yours.”

“I tried that,” Catla huffed, folding her arms. “I kept up poking Bilfur, but he just kept sleeping! An’ L _ú_ fi’s just as bad, he were asleeping even 'fore Bili! Not me, sleep’s dull. I needs a good bloody tale so’s I has something good to dream on.”

This requirement Bombur could not blame on his brother’s wild tales - this was all Dwalin’s doing. He’d taken a shine to the wee lass and when he was in a humor for it, he could weave tales as cunningly as his elder brother. Balin tended to stick to histories while Dwalin’s ran more to war epics and, as a result, so did Catla’s. 

“Let me get Alfur settled,” Bombur said, giving his daughter a little push so she slid back onto the floor, “an’ I’ll see what I can do.”

Alfur just wanted a bit of moping up before he was ready for his cot. It was in his and his wife’s room, he being too young to share with his elder brothers and sister. Catla followed behind asking if she could help with this or that. Each time her father gave her a firm, but kind, 'No thank you,“ until she tired of asking and climbed atop her parents’ bed to proceed bouncing on the balls of her feet. 

"Settle, then,” Bombur said, getting into bed himself. His wife was gone for the night; with the new years’ celebrations soon to begin, she’d been at her parents’ bake shop longer and longer hours, coming home smelling of flour, her cheeks flushed. Catla lay down beside her father, snuggling up close to him with her head cushioned on his arm. “A bloody war story you’re wanting, is it?”

“Aye,” she yawned, evidently more tired than she let on. “Or just a story 'bout a dragon, if there’s no good war stories to be told.”

Bombur smiled down at her, “Don’t tell me you been asking for dragon tales from Mister Dwalin! He’d not like it, me girl, mark that.”

“Oh no!” Catla insisted. “No, I’d not ask Mister Dwalin that, nor Mister Thorin neither, not for a hundred copper pennies. But d'you know any? Good and frightful!”

“Don’t know no frightful stories,” Bombur informed her. Catla yawned again, out of tiredness or boredom he could not say, but this time her eyes stayed closed as she cuddled up by him. “Well…save one.”

One sleepy green eye opened and Catla looked at him with interest. “Which?”

“Once, there was a little dwarrowlass, yea big. Oh, she were a wee terror, was she! Stayed up past her bedtime and pestered her adad with questions and pulled her brother’s plaits and knocked the cream pitcher over every morning!”

“DA!” Catla protested, sounding more awake now. “No fair! That’s a tale 'bout me!”

Bombur laughed softly, patting her hair, “Well, you’re the most frightful creature I know.”

Delighted, his daughter laughed, then lapsed into silence. Bombur tucked the covers around her, feeling sleepy himself. He lay back against his pillows and soon the two of them drifted off into sleep, each one wearing a very small smile on their face.


	31. Dwarven Daycare II (Balin Kid!Fic)

Balin had been abandoned by those he trusted most. The terms of his imprisonment were light, but he would not yield to his guards’ attempts to cajole him from the place where he stood watch by the bars. He believed - he had to believe - that they were coming back for him. Though he tried to be as still and quiet as stone, he could not halt the tears that coursed down his cheeks. Routinely he was approached by those who held him prisoner, asking whether or not he’d like something to eat or drink. Whether he wanted to ‘play.’ He did not give them the satisfaction of an answer. Nor did he do anything but cringe away from his fellow-captives, those weak-willed (to his mind), who had become so broken down by their fates that they appeared to enjoy this place and tried to coax him away from the bars, offering him balls and rattles and cups of sweet fruit juice. 

 

Fundin was still a good ways down the hall when he heard the unmistakable sound of his son shouting, “Ada!” and then bursting into tears. Leaving his wife to catch up with him, he jogged over to the room where the littlest dwarflings were dropped off by busy parents at work and reached down over the low gate set up across the doorway to scoop him up.

 

“We had a bit of a difficult day,” Lady Iarpa said with a note of apology in her voice. “Not unusual, but wee Balin here’s stood by waiting for you since you dropped him off, poor thing.”

 

Dóra had finally caught up with them around this time, having run to match her husband’s swift trek down the street. “Oh dear,” she sighed, rubbing Balin’s back. He burrowed his face further into his father’s beard, sniffling. “I hope he wasn’t much trouble.”

 

“Oh, no trouble, quiet as a mouse,” Iarpa assured them. “Only he didn’t have aught to eat and I’m sure he’s got to be hungry - that makes it worse, feeling poorly then not eating on top of it. But that’s alright, we’ll try again tomorrow, eh, Balin?”

 

Balin did not lift his head until Fundin carried him well away of the sight of his gaol while Dóra paid the minders and thanked them for their trouble. 

 

He was unusually clingy for the rest of the evening. Ordinarily he was an independent-minded little dwarf, toddling about, content to play by himself, or look at picture books, or color on the floor with chalks until he was scolded and given a piece of paper. But today, whenever his adad or amad tried to leave him to his own devices, he would lift his arms and cry until they picked him back up again. 

 

Dóra tried to be consoling, but firm. “Now then, dearest,” she’d say, kneeling on the ground beside him, one hand on his back. “Ama has to get some work done, why don’t you play with your blocks, eh? Build me a great big tower and I’ll come and look when you’re finished.”

 

That managed to get a begrudging few sniffles out of him, as well as a sleeve drawn across his nose and a very shallow nod. Dóra kissed his dark curls and got up, managing to spend a few quiet minutes in transcribing the day’s minutes from a council meeting shortly before Thrór opened the court to receiving visitors. Then Fundin came in from the bathroom, having taken a quick soak to wind down after guard training and the calm shattered. Balin wailed most pitifully, reaching for his father who, sure as anything, picked him up and kissed him, shooting a worried look at Dóra.

 

“Well, so much for that,” she said, laying aside her quill. 

 

“Maybe he’s too young yet to be left on his own,” Fundin opined as Balin lay his head down on his shoulder and yawned; pitching a non-stop fit could wear a body out. 

 

“He wasn’t on his own,” his wife pointed out logically. “He was in the care of very able minders and surrounded by new playmates - well, he would have been if he played with them. Tomorrow, eh, dearest?”

 

Balin managed to give her a look of profound betrayal, made all the more condemning for his round cheeks and red eyes and running nose. His mother bore it ably and turned to her husband, “Just put him down for a bit so he sees we’re not going anywhere, that nothing’ll happen if he’s left by his lonesome for a bit - ”

 

Fundin attempted to go along with this plan, he really did, but no sooner did Balin’s bottom touch the carpet than he started crying again and his father, who’d never been able to bear his tears well, felt he had no choice but to hold him. And hold him he did - for the rest of the day, through supper, until Balin fell asleep in his arms and could be returned to his cot, unaware that he was yet again being abandoned. 

 

“I’m due at court early,” Dóra informed her husband when they turned in themselves. “Can you take him to the minders’?”

 

“Sure,” Fundin nodded, shooting a worried look to the open door that led into the nursery. “Er…you know, it’s not as if Tírra and Galinn need an extra set of hands battering the ten-year apprentices into the mud. I could bow out for the day. If it’s easier.”

 

“Easier for who?” his wife asked, arching a brow and kissing him on the nose. “Gílla said her two were a bit weepy their first day, but they cheered up in no time. I’m sure he’ll come round. Besides, I think it’s good for him, my parents  _never_  left me with minders, let alone other children, I think…well, I’d like Balin to have more company than the two of us and his aunts and uncles and cousins.”

 

“Friends, you mean?” Fundin asked, then snorted. “Overrated.”

 

Dóra gave him a good hard smack beneath the covers. “Says the dwarf whose always had many of them. Take it from me, it’s an awfully lonely way to grow up, just having your parents around for company.”

 

Fundin kissed her. “You turned out alright.”

 

“Flatterer.”

 

“Always.”

 

The next morning, Dóra roused her son with a hug and a kiss goodbye. Fundin got him dressed, fed, changed, and ready for his day. Balin seemed to have recovered from his pitiful condition of yesterday and babbled away merrily while Fundin nodded along, pretending to both understand and agree with everything he said. Something about apples and ponies, he thought he might have been recollecting their trip to the orchards a week ago and prayed his son’s memory for bad experiences was not as good as his memory for cheerful ones.

 

That turned out not to be the case. No sooner had they rounded the corner than Balin’s talking stopped and whimpering began. “No, no, no Da, no please, I want stay with  _you_. Please? Please?”

 

“It’ll be alright,” Fundin tried to sound confident, but his tone faltered a bit as they drew nearer. “You’ll have fun, make lots of friends, eh? And there’s toys here that you haven’t got at home, isn’t that nice?”

 

“Please and thank you?” Balin tried again, having been taught that if he wanted something, he ought to begin and end with those particular terms. “Please stay and thank you?”

 

“Ah, there’s my little friend!” Iarpa cried out cheerfully as she reached over the bars to take Balin. He clung to his father’s coat with more strength than one would expect in a ten-year-old, wailing so loudly that some of the other children started up, seemingly in sympathy.

 

Fundin was torn between embarrassment and heartbreak; he was just so  _small_  and looked doubly so as he reached one hand through the bars when he was set on his feet. 

 

“Have a good day!” Iarpa waved to Fundin. “Say good-bye to your adad, Balin, you’ll see him again very soon.”

 

“Come back!” Balin cried, one tiny hand grasping for him. “Please!”

 

That did it. Fundin the Fearless who had faced down all the terrors of the North, South, East, and West, caved in to a bout of tears and a pleading voice. 

 

“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” Fundin said hastily, reaching down and plucking Balin up over the gate. “Er. His Ma’s not…she’s er, got someone else…to…work. I-I’ll just bring him back to her. That’s…right, thanks, but not today. I just remembered. Just now.”

 

Iarpa smiled at him and when she spoke it was in the same soothing tone she’d used on Balin. “Well, of course, if you don’t need our services today, that’s alright. We’ll miss him - but we’ll see you again, won’t we Balin?”

 

This time, Balin was all smiles. He wrapped one arm around his father’s neck and waved at Iarpa. “Bye-bye!” he called, with the confidence of a dwarf bidding farewell to a place he had not much liked and was sure he would never set eyes on again. 

 

And indeed, his confidence was well-founded. Balin passed a very happy afternoon with his father, playing with blocks and balls and puzzles until the door of their house flew open and he heard his mother shout, a little too loudly,  _“There_  you are!”

 

“Ama!” Balin cried joyously, obviously happy that his two favorite dwarves were together again. He patted the stretch of carpet beside him and said, “Play puzzle, Ama?”

 

“Later,” she said firmly, crossing to them and tugging Fundin’s arm to pull him to his feet. “I need to have a quick word with Adad, you’ll be alright on your own, won’t you, dearest?”

 

Balin nodded happily and went on putting the trunk piece on his oliphaunt. He only heard the murmur of voices from the kitchen, but did not pay them a great deal of mind.

 

“You might’ve sent word that you kept him home,” Dóra whispered, mindful to keep her voice down. “I had to run all over half the mountain before Loni told me you’d not come to the arena at all today because you were staying home with Balin, I thought he must have gotten ill!”

 

“I’m sorry you were worried,” Fundin said uncomfortably. He shifted on his feet and looked down at the top of his wife’s head. He wasn’t sure whether she wanted an embrace at the moment, she seemed a trifle too upset - specifically at him. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to apologize for causing all the trouble to begin with. 

 

“I wasn’t worried,” she said, folding her arms and tilting her chin up to look him full in the face. “I’m annoyed, but I knew he was with you, Iarpa told me you two had gone off together and she - very politely, but she made her point - she said that the little ones don’t get used to being left if you don’t leave them.”

 

“But he was so upset - ” Fundin began, but his wife shushed him and lay a hand on his arm.

 

“Is this about Balin being upset or you being upset?” she asked, gently. “I don’t blame you, I don’t like to listen to him cry, but if you act as though leaving him behind is the most awful thing, he’s going to believe it.  We’ve got to be very brave and very firm and let him have his cry.”

 

Heaving huge sigh, Fundin ran a hand through his hair and muttered, “I don’t think I’m that brave.”

 

Dóra rose up on her toes and tugged at his arm to make him bend over so she could kiss him. “Of course you are. And he is as well. Try again on the morrow, I have very great faith in both of you.”

 

Once again, Dóra left the both of them just as Balin was waking up. Fundin got ready for his day, then dressed Balin, fed him - and had to dress him  _again_  because he still found spoons a bit tricky to manage dexterously. They were running late when Fundin went to drop him off and once again, Balin clung to him for dear life and wailed.

 

“How about you come in and play for a bit?” Iarpa said and it took Fundin a moment to realize she was talking to him. “That helps, if the little ones see Ama and Ada having a good time, it’s a little easier on them.”

 

Fundin glanced at the clock; he was behind his time, but if Balin did not settle down, he’d have to miss work twice in a row, so this really was a far better alternative. Stepping over the low gate easily, he watched where he was going so that he did not accidentally trod on any of the little ones crawling or running about on the floor below. It took Balin a moment to raise his head from where it was hidden in his father’s shoulder and he watched the other children with wary interest.

 

It really was quite a nice room, big and painted with cheerful colors. There was a small fortress with a slide built in for the children to climb and play on, as well as a little mock shop filled with tiny costumes to try on and play pretend. There were balls and blocks and stuffed toys in cubby holes along the walls, as well as a hearth with a painted fire where some of the children were pretending to cook food. There was a line of rocking horses against the wall and, after surveying the scene for a moment, Balin pointed at them and whispered, “Can I ride the horsie?”

 

“Of course,” Fundin said, picking his way through the sea of dwarflings and their caretakers. They all looked up as they passed and some of the child-minders looked up and said, “Good morrow, Balin! It’s very nice to see you!”

 

He smile shyly and then giggled when Fundin placed him on the horse and let him rock back and forth for a few minutes. “Very good,” his father said encouragingly. “That’s fine horsemanship.”

 

They moved on to the slide next, Balin climbed carefully to the top of the structure and slid down into his father’s waiting hands. Each time Fundin praised him, commending him for how high he climbed and how quickly he slid.

 

“I’m the fastest!” Balin boasted, giving Fundin a big hug around the leg - since that was the only bit of him, aside from his neck that he could get his arms all the way around. “Blocks, now, Da, please!”

 

It was when they were playing with blocks that another little dwarfling, older than Balin, toddled over and knocked his tower down. Far from being cross, Balin laughed and built it back up, then clapped when the little one sent them scattering over the floor.

 

“Again!” the other child crowed. “Again!”

 

Balin obliged him and Iarpa came over, pleased to no end at the sight of the mess-making. “Ooh, have you made a new friend, Balin? This is Atli, his Ama’s in the Guard too, you’ll have lots to talk about.”

 

Atli didn’t seem to have many words more than, “Yay!” and “Again!” but Balin did not seem put out by that. On the contrary, the more excited Atli became, the more pleased Balin seemed and it was hardly any time later that he apparently forgot that his father was there at all.

 

Iarpa gave Fundin several meaningful looks and tilts of her head before he realized that she was signaling for him to go. “Your adad’s leaving now, Balin. Say good-bye, we’re going to paint in a few minutes!”

 

Fundin looked at the dwarrowdam as if she’d lost her mind. Surely,  _surely_  if Balin thought his father was leaving him, he’d have another bout of crying and complaining. But to his amazement, Balin looked up briefly, smiled and said, “Bye!” then immediately went back to playing.

 

And that was good, Fundin tried to convince himself as he made his lonely way to the training arena. That was what they wanted. And it was good for Balin to make some friends, which he seemed to be doing. It ought to be a relief that he’d been able to leave him without incident.

 

Still, as he made his way to work, exchanging his day clothes for leather padded armor, he couldn’t help feeling like this time  _he_  was the one who had been abandoned.


	32. Pirates (Vili&Bofur Kid!Fic)

“AVAST” Bofur yelled, swinging a stout twig overhead. “Hoist the mizzen! Sail for glory!”

“Ouch!” Víli exclaimed, dropping his own stick and clutching his eye. 

Bofur had been aiming for his chest, but it was tough going when one had a scrap of cloth tied over one eye. “Did I get you?”

“Do I still got an eye?” Víli asked, squinting at him. He’d been hopping about on one leg, not having been able to find a wooden proxy or a crutch. He tottered, but kept himself upright on one foot while his cousin examined his wound.

“I can’t tell,” he said honestly. “You got the left one closed. Open it up a bit I’ll have a look.”

“But it hurts!” Víli complained. 

Bofur grinned at him. “Well, then! If it hurts, it’s still there!”

“Oh,” Víli grinned back, then ducked down to retrieve his stick. Poking Bofur in the belly he shouted, “ON GUARD! BEWARE THE CRACK-IN.”

“SUPPER!” A voice, louder than theirs echoed inside the doorway of their complex of flats, growing in volume as Kíli, Víli’s elder brother, jogged out to call them in to eat. He stopped short when he saw his brother with a swollen left eye, hopping about on one foot and his cousin brandishing a stick at him with a sagging scrap off cloth tied over his head. “What’s all this, then?”

“We’re pirates!” Bofur declared, taking advantage of Víli’s distraction to stab him in the other leg. He obligingly crumpled on the ground, now legless, flailing and stabbing at Bofur’s knees.

“I got you!” Víli cried when Bofur did not fall. “I got you good! Kí! I got him, didn’t I get him? Right in the leg!”

“Sure,” his brother replied without much conviction. “Are you a pirate too?”

“‘Course!” Víli insisted. “What’s a pirate to fight without another pirate to make mischief. See, I got me own ship, an’ his is comin’ at me, so I swings onto his ship and I challenges him to a duel. 'TO ARMS!’ says I, an  _he_  says - ”

“Aye,” Kíli nodded skeptically. “And what’s Bombur meant to be, then?”

Bombur was crawling all over the ground, occasionally stopping to pull up handfuls of grass. He’d stopped eating it a quarter of an hour ago when he realized it wasn’t very tasty. 

“He’s the crack-in,” Bofur supplied.

“Crack in what?” Bifur had come outside from below. “Auntie said she didn’t think it was a good idea, sending me up when you four was already making mischief, but I says to her I’d be alright - what’s keeping you?”

“Well, turns out them lads’re gone to sea,” Kíli replied. “And Bombur’s…the crack in the boat, I expect. Not a bad job for him, as he don’t have to get up and walk - do you, lad?”

Bombur turned when he heard his name and smiled what would have been a toothy smile if he had more than three teeth. He raised his arms up to be held and Bifur scooped him right up. “Well, they’ve got fish enough, I’m sure. Won’t mind missing supper.”

“Won’t at that,” Kíli stroked his short beard musingly. “Alright, then, see you later, laddies! Mind them legs, nadadith!”

“We’re coming!” Víli shouted, never one to miss a meal. Wounds forgotten, he flung his stick aside and grabbed hold of Bofur’s wrist. “Come along, they’ll eat it all!”

“They’d better not!” Bofur said, keeping hold of his stick. “I’ll run 'em through! AVAST!”


	33. Good Family (Nori)

Wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. Lad from a good family turning out to be a bit of a cloudy emerald. At least, he heard his family was good, respectable; hadn’t much memory of that to be honest.

Everyone assumed he didn’t remember his adad, that he was lying, but that was one thing Nori never lied about. He did remember him, big fellow - or maybe it was because he was such a wee thing, ten, twelve years if he was a day. Looked like Dori, only brown-haired. In his memory he was smiling. Smiling  _at_  Nori which was something of a novelty to see on that face. His brother usually only managed a kind of concerned pout. 

So Nori didn’t have much memory of Erebor, had a tendency to nod along whenever the others spoke of their homeland, sometimes muttering little agreements like,  _Oh, right, the city center on marketday, everyone packed in, could get awfully hot,_  or,  _Sure, the Mahalmerag feast days were…festive._ (To be honest, he thought everyone did a bit of embellishing now and again, especially certain exiled princesses called Dís.) But he didn’t remember the market, didn’t remember the feasts. That was all rent and ruined under the claws of a dragon. Stolen. And if a dragon could take a whole Mountain, what was a bit of poaching here and there? What were a few tin coins in place of copper? And what was the difference if his family’s reputation took a trashing on his account - what was left of them to preserve?

Still, just because he was a scallywag (Bofur’s words, not his), he had some scruples. Didn’t violate any laws on Broadbeam lands. Hadn’t stolen or cheated a soul in the village since he was too young to stand trial. So when he came home, his family didn’t have a thing to worry about. Didn’t stop them worrying, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. 

There it was, really. One memory of a father, long since gone cloudy and murky around the edges. All his earliest memories of his mother and brother were on the roadside, under open sky or crowded in tents, damp, mildewy, and cramped. Hungry, tired. Dark days. Days when stealing a meat pie or loaf of bread might have added a little light.

Too bad, they said. Such a good family. But what did Nori know of respectability?


	34. Tutor (Ori)

“That’s good,” Ori encouraged. “That’s really good, now, erm, perhaps just try to keep all the letters on the same line and it’ll be even better!”

 

Apprenticing meant different things to different dwarves. For some, it was a hard slog in the forges for twelve hours a day, hauling coal, wiping down walls, cleaning the chimney and occasionally getting tips about smithing. For others it was grueling hours in the hot sun drilling military tactics for hours. For others, it involved sitting with a dwarfling on one’s lap, critiquing runes. 

 

Ori didn’t mind so much. He spent plenty of time copying with the piece work he took home and there was a greater need of teachers than scribes in the Ered Luin anyway. Besides, the little ones were a delight sometimes, especially those few dwarflings who really took to learning and didn’t mind sitting on wooden benches all day, dutifully copying on their slates.

 

He probably had an affinity for them because he used to  _be_  one of those dwarflings. Every day he would traipse to Mister Balin’s home either holding his mother’s hand or Dori’s, bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement. His minder usually told him to please calm down else they’d drop whatever it was they were carrying. Usually bolts of cloth or reams of rag paper that they gave him in exchange for his lessons. Once, it would never have occurred to any of them to barter for such services, but Mister Balin could not afford to be picky and Ama and Dori couldn’t bear to deprive Ori of something that gave him such pleasure. 

 

Of course, the little ones who didn’t quite have a knack for studies were also a delight, in their own, challenging sort of way.

 

“But I got all them letters down,” Haginn said, confused. “Ain’t that me task?”

 

“Part of it,” Ori said encouragingly, patting him on the head. “But if you could just make sure they’re in the right order and all following one after the other - well, then people will be able to  _read_  what you’ve written and won’t that be a treat?”

 

Haginn thought about it, small face creasing in a frown. He idly twirled the lock of hair that hung down from his chin, then smiled and nodded, “Or I could read it out for folk to hear?”

“If you’d like,” Ori said, nodding. 

 

“Oh, good!” he exclaimed, smiling. He had a tooth knocked out the day before during a spot of mischief with his friends and there was a great big gap that was awfully endearing. “I can tell me Ma what all it says, she’ll be right pleased!”

 

“That’s the idea,” Ori said. “Go on, then, I’ll walk you to the mines at day’s end and then you can show it off.”

 

Haginn’s smile widened and he hugged Ori round the middle. Then he went back to work, reddish-yellow eyebrows furrowed with concentration. He had his whole fist wrapped around the chalk piece, but when he broke it, Ori was right there with another at the ready.

 

It wasn’t quite as grand as creating gilt illuminations upon vellum, writing down the grand epics for future generations, but Ori couldn’t find too much to complain about in his chosen craft. 


	35. Tidy (Dori&Thorin)

Thorin answered the brusque knock on the door with some surprise. Who could be calling on him? Dís was already at work, Dwalin would have joined her by now and he and Balin were under an agreement to meet in the interior of the Mountain together to proceed to the interior council chambers. It was time for the yearly meeting of the Broadbeam and Firebeard lords and ladies to which he was invited - not as a courtesy, but as an opportunity to plead his people’s case for continued residence. Though they had cost the government of the Ered Luin next to nothing in providing for them - and, indeed, more than contributed to their keep in what they paid in local taxes - it was always a tense day for him.

 

And the tension did not need to increase by getting tangled up in other dwarves’s familial problems. At least, that was what Thorin assumed his fate would be when he opened the door and saw Dori, son of Hornbori, standing on the threshold looking faintly miffed.

 

“Nori’s not here,” he said at once. Dís had a habit of sheltering the little scamp when he’d run afoul of someone or other and faced his brother’s wrath. Thorin had not recently checked the pantry for stray dwarflings, but he was reasonably confident that he couldn’t have sneaked in while Thorin had been washing without being noticed. 

 

“I’m not here for Nori,” Dori said, casually placing a foot upon the threshold as if preparing to stop a door on its way to be slammed in his face. “I’m here for you.”

 

Thorin’s brow furrowed, but the door remained where it was. “I’m..”

 

“Oh, I know, busy,” Dori said, waving a hand dismissively. A hand, Thorin saw now that he looked, that was full of accoutrements for the styling of hair. “You have a very important meeting to attend, a meeting that might well effect our status here in the West and I think it’s for the best if you don’t attend it looking like something a cat dragged in from the forge, don’t you?”

 

That caught Thorin off-guard and Dori used that to his advantage, stepping over the threshold and making himself quite at home, laying out beads, claps, combs and shears atop the kitchen table. “Well, come along then,” he tsked, looking Thorin up and down in a manner that indicated he did not exactly approve of what he saw. “You’ll be late.”

 

Finding his tongue, Thorin said, “I really don’t think - " 

 

"Oh, believe me, I know,” Dori rolled his eyes. “I recall your skipping into our classroom as children, hair an absolute sight.  _‘I suppose princes haven’t got to care for such things_ , I thought and dismissed it, but while princes of the realm might be able to wander around with their hair in their eyes and not mind about bumping into walls, kings in exile…well, don’t have the luxury. So. I humbly request that you sit yourself down,  _sir_ , and give me fifteen minutes with that mop.”

 

Dori managed to sound both like and unlike Thorin’s own mother in that moment, which was probably what compelled him to sit down in the first place. She was forever lamenting the state of his hair, that it was too thin, too fine, to difficult to manage, but manage she did because she didn’t want him looking  _a sight._  She had the same words for his father who, though blessed with easier hair to manage, never seemed to care to find the time to spruce himself up. 

 

Just as soon as his scalp was in easy reach of Dori’s hands, he was attacked, though almost at once he managed to catch his comb on a snarled bit. “It’s not easy to -”  Thorin began, but Dori cut him off.

 

“Naturally; nothing is easy, but that’s no excuse for giving up,” he said, switching to a wide-toothed comb to start with. “You could look handsome, if you took the time.”

 

Thorin snorted; wild locks aside, he was quite sure that there was little under the earth that could be done to make him  _handsome._  Most days he just tried for 'presentable.' 

 

“Mind the ears,” he muttered, wryly, under his breath. Another reason for keeping one’s hair down; when one’s ears stuck out of the side of one’s head like handles on a pitcher, it was better for all that they be kept hidden. Then again, Dori was himself Made in the manner of a classical statue, hard and soft melded together in a most becoming form and face. Maybe when one had been gifted with such beauty, they saw the potential for it everywhere. 

 

Once upon a time, this would never have happened. Dori had little use for Thorin when they were children and the lack of interest was mutual. They were distant cousins, on his mother’s side, she being a descendant of old King Óin, but Irpa married herself a merchant and, schooling aside, they moved in very different circles. But for their exile, they would have had little cause to speak to one another, once they began their apprenticeships in earnest. 

 

Dori was a funny mix of a tradesman’s practicality and a royal’s dignity. He worked with materials far beneath his skill, but he did his best with them (complaining heartily about being expected to work miracles in the wilderness, but miracles he worked.) Under his hands, rough homespun took on a quality it would never have enjoyed in the looms of lesser craftsmen, and though one could not ape silk from wool, Dori came damn close. 

 

Apparently his talents for making something of nothing extended beyond the realm of cloth-making. For when, exactly fifteen minutes later, he produced a small mirror for Thorin to look into, he had to admit that he might pass for handsome, in the right light.

 

“Pity about the ears,” Thorin said, after blinking a bit at his reflection. He shook his head slightly, testing the strength of the braids; not a one slid out of place. “Well done.”

 

“Naturally,” Dori smiled briefly at him, collected his things and prepared to go. “Now, make a good showing, will you. I hardly need tell you how much I  _loathe_  travel.”


	36. Belonging (Fili)

Sometimes - just sometimes, mind, he didn’t make it a habit to be maudlin - Fíli wasn’t quite sure where he’d come from.

 

The Blue Mountains? Aye, born and bred there. But he’d been taught from birth that his true home was  _Erebor_. Fíli of the Ered Luin was a creature only half-realized. Fíli of Erebor…well, he wasn’t someone Fíli knew at all. Wasn’t even someone he could imagine for he didn’t  _look_  like one of the descended of the Longbeard line, did he? With his yellow hair, short stature - Kíli was taller than them, by the hammers of their (evidently shared) ancestors! And wasn’t that just unfair? He hadn’t spoken to him for a full two hours on the day when Kíli grabbed him on the way out the door and insisted on measuring their heights, whooping with glee when he confirmed that the top of Fíli’s head only came up to the middle of his forehead.

 

It was a petty, stupid sort of thing to be bothered about and as Kíli continued his inevitable creep up in height and Fíli remained exactly as he was, he’d gotten over it…mostly. But he had a look about him that read as pure Broadbeam. Half-true, he supposed, for wasn’t he Fíli, Víli’s son?

 

The granddams and grandsires of the village certainly thought so. “Ah, there’s Víli’s lad,” they’d smile, offering him an extra toffee or a sample of cheese when he was out with his mother or his uncle or even his cousins, getting a bit of shopping done. When he was little, he liked the partiality - and to be entirely honest, he still got a bit of pleasure whenever he managed to claim a good price for a bit of work he’d wrought in the forge. “Just a wee bit extra, for one of our own,” they’d wink, sliding an extra coin across the table for his troubles. 

 

But was he their own? Truly? Víli’s son, aye, Víli, the father he couldn’t really remember (no matter how much everyone talked about him, Fíli had to imagine his booming laughter, his ever-present smile, his hearty brogue and when he tried to call to mind a picture of his adad’s face, he had no idea if it was a real memory rising from the depths of his mind or just a merrier version of what he saw in the looking glass). But Fíli had ever signed his name Fíli Thorinul. 

 

Víli’s son. Thorin’s heir. Things he knew were both true, but knowing something wasn’t the same as understanding it and Fíli didn’t understand his lot at all, sometimes. A prince and an heir to a kingdom he’d never seen and could only imagine from the stories he’d heard from his family and friends over the years. A kingdom that would be his, someday, maybe, if they were lucky or blessed. It would mean turning his back on the place where he’d grown up, a place where at least twice weekly someone smiled at him and said,  _Just the graven image of your Ada, lad. The graven image._

 

And when the time came to reclaim that kingdom, Fíli pushed away his doubts, his conflicted thoughts on where he belonged. He swore his fealty to Thorin. Duty, honor, and love, of course love. When it came right down to it, son or heir, Broadbeam or Longbeared, he’d do whatever it took to make one of them proud.


	37. Speechless (Frerin&Gloin Kid!Fic)

The trouble with not speaking to someone is that before you could get around to the ‘not speaking’ bit, you had to tell them why you weren’t speaking to them. It delayed the blissful pleasure of ignoring them, occasionally for an annoying length of time.

“I’m not speaking to you,” Glóin whispered out of the corner of his mouth. They were at lessons and were meant to be copying on their slates, but Frerin kept elbowing him and asking to see his work so he could be sure that he was doing it properly.

“What?” Frerin asked, loudly enough that their classmates turned to look at him.

“I’m not speaking to you!” Glóin said more emphatically. Their teacher turned round then, eyes fixed upon him.

“Glóin, you are meant to be copying, not talking,” she said firmly.

“I wasn’t!” he exclaimed. “I was telling Frerin that I wasn’t - ”

“Glóin!” she scolded, hands upon her hips. He sank back in his seat, but not before glaring at Frerin in a way that communicated,  _This is all your fault_. “You’ll stay behind during our recess since you prefer to get your chatter out during classtime.”

“I’m not speaking to you,” Glóin said later at supper, when Frerin asked him to pass the gravy.

“You don’t have to speak to me,” Frerin pointed out, stupid and reasonable all at once. Glóin turned away, scowling. “You just have to hand it to me.

Glóin said nothing.

"Auntie Maeva,” Frerin appealed to his mother, sitting on Glóin’s other side. “Can I please have the gravy?”

“Glóin, pass the gravy to your cousin,” she ordered. 

“But Ama!”

“Glóin!” she said. People had been shouting his name a lot today and he did not like that at all. “Go on, don’t be rude.”

“But!”

“Glóin,” she said warningly. “Any more of that and you’ll not get any sweets.”

“ _Fine,_ ” Glóin said, but he wasn’t as careful as he ought to be and when he slammed the cup of gravy down it splashed all over himself and Frerin and he  _still_  didn’t get to have his dessert. 

“I’ll save you some!” Frerin reassured him as Glóin was marched out for a bath and to bed. But the next day at lessons he confided that he forgot and ate both his and Glóin’ share (which was delicious). 

“I hate you,” Glóin said grumpily. Frerin grinned at him.

“But you’re talking to me again!” he said happily. “That’s something.”

“Well,” Glóin sighed as they were herded into the room, “it’s too much trouble not to.”


	38. To the Wars ('Ur Family)

Bifur had a habit of whistling while he carved that he learned to curb when his cousins came to live with him; Bombur could sleep through nearly anything, but Bofur was restless at night in those early days and any sound would send him bolting out of bed to crawl under it and take his little brother down with him. Bifur only had to survey the aftermath of one of those episodes to confine himself to humming while he worked. Meant fewer bumped knees, fewer tears, and fewer hours spent trying to soothe the poor lads back to sleep. 

 

So he’d taken care ever since and now, years after his cousins first came to live alongside himself and his father - Da having moved in with Bifur so the lads could have the room that he’d shared with his wife - he’d gotten good at cutting himself off before his attempt at musicality woke either of them. Yet tonight, though the house was quiet, the door of his cousin’s room swung open and Bofur padded into the sitting room.

 

He’d had a bit of a growth-spurt recently, his trousers were a little too short in the ankle and he was skinny as a floorboard turned sideways. 

 

“Did I wake you?” Bifur asked quietly. He wasn’t an early-to-bed sort himself, seemed there weren’t enough hours in the day to get done all that needed to get done. But he’d always snatch a bit of time for toy-making. 

“Nah,” Bofur said, shuffling his feet on the floor. “Couldn’t sleep. You…ah…you and Uncle’re going to say good-bye, eh? On the morrow? Only Bombur’d be terrible upset if you left without a word.”

 

Ah. Well. Thoughts could be just as loud as off-pitch whistling, couldn’t they?

 

Bifur put aside his knife and took to his feet. “Reckon we got a wee bit of chocolate about somewheres, d'you want a cup?”

 

“Sure!” Bofur said, some of his solemn air dropping a bit. The promise of sweets could do that to a lad.

 

Bifur busied himself coaxing the fire back to life and setting a small pot of milk to warming. “'Course we’re going to say good-bye, no need to worry on that.”

 

“Good, I thought so,” Bofur said, satisfied. “I…I’ll tell Bombur, t'would do him good.”

 

“Tell him not to worry,” Bifur agreed. “Could you get the sugar down from the - ah, thanks, lad. Anyhow, you’ll be seeing the lot of us off, me and Uncle Bilfur and Kíli and Uncle Fíli. They’d no more think to leave without a proper good-bye than we’d do.”

 

“Right,” Bofur said, more to himself than to his cousin. “An’ we’ll stay along of Auntie Varla 'til…'til all’s said an’ done.”

 

“That you will,” Bifur nodded. “Only check in on the place now and again, see as no one robs us.”

 

He winked at Bofur and got a smile for his troubles. More than once his father said they ought to keep the doors unlocked, so if a thief wanted to help themself to their spoons or patched bedlinens, they’d not have the trouble of re-hanging the door once they were gone.

 

“We’ll look after the place,” Bofur said, scratching the back of his head. “Only don’t stay away  _too_ …how long’s this s'posed to go on for? How many Orcs is there?”

 

“Lots,” Bifur said. “An’ I don’t rightly know. Long as it takes, I s'pose. Got to do our bit. I don’t like the idea o'them Orcs coming West to do…anyhow.”

 

There was no need to elaborate on what the Orcs might do if they came West. Bofur had seen the destruction with his own eyes, not so long ago when the village burned and the hills rang with screams of despair and fury. They’d given them a routing then, but at great cost. No one was safe with those creatures tearing through the countryside. It was as he said, they had to do their part. If Dwarves did not stand together, no one would stand for them.

 

The milk came to temperature and Bifur shaved off thin slices of chocolate and added them to the pot with a decent chip of sugar off the cone; it was getting low, but he was sure Auntie Varla stocked up on sweets enough to keep the lads satisfied for a time. In terrible times, little pleasures meant so much more.

 

As he poured the mugs, Bofur spoke up again, “Won’t be the same. With you an’ Kíli gone. Who’s to tell us when me and Víli’re being dross-headed?”

 

“Bombur’ll have to speak up a bit more,” Bifur smiled. “It’ll be good for him, I think. He’s got sense and you lads…you got imagination.”

 

Bofur grinned at that. Uncle Bilfur said they had big ideas and that’s  _all_  they had. Cousin Kíli thought they spent too much time 'melting lead shards’ when they might actually be making themselves useful (admittedly Bofur and Víli did spend a lot of time soaking up travelers’ stories in the marketplace when all they were meant to be doing was buying up some flour or cloth). Auntie Varla said they were the darlingest, foolishest, dearest loves she’d ever known. Whoever was right, they made for jolly company. Bifur was glad they were staying with his aunt, they’d be a comfort to her while her husband and eldest son were away. 

 

“Bifur,” he said, looking up nervously when at last his mug was drained and even Bifur was feeling the pull to sleep. “You will come back. Eh?”

 

Bifur finished his drink, to give himself a moment to answer. Would he? He couldn’t know. He hadn’t thought of it. He’d signed on to be a warrior because it felt right. They’d be marching forth the next morning. He’d not thought of anything beyond that. He couldn’t know, so why fret? But Bofur was fretting and to put his mind at ease, Bifur reached out and lay a hand on his shoulder, “We’ll see each other again, sooner or later. That’s a promise.”

 

Bofur nodded slowly. He thanked him for the cocoa and went back to his room. There was chocolate in the wispy dark hair on his upper lip, but Bifur didn’t say anything about it. Just watched him go and gathered the dishes with a sigh. 

 

His family had lost a great deal. They stood to lose yet more.  _Would_  he come back? He could not know, but he could promise himself one thing: if he had to pull himself back from the brink of death to come home, he’d try. For his family, he’d do anything.


	39. Babysitting III (Dis&Dwalin Kid!Fic)

_All things told, there were far worse tasks to be given than keeping an eye on little Dís. In the first place, it beat minding the ponies. In the second, she was good for a laugh._

He’d been given strict instructions to keep her away from the tents. They were setting up camp, laying down spikes, making a make-shift paddock for the animals, all sorts of tasks that were too dangerous for little dwarflings who had a tendency to want to help, especially when helping involved hefting hammers taller than they were. Ordinarily, Dwalin would have pitched right in, more useful in these instances for his height rather than his strength, but as he’d taken a bad fall not so long ago, it was decided that he could be put to better use in childminding than in tent-pitching.

 

Then again, he reflected, peeking out through fingers that he’d been told to place tightly over his eyes, her parents might change their minds when they discovered that he’d given in to her pleading for a round of hide-and-seek. The idea of  _deliberately_  telling a dwarfling to get out of one’s sight was anathema to them after all they’d lost, but Dís didn’t see it that way and he didn’t have the heart to tell her off for wanting to have a game. Anyway, how far could she get in the time it took him to count to ten?

Evidently, not very far. No sooner had he said, “Nine,” than he heard a prompt response.

 

“I’m not ready yet!”

 

“…and a half,” Dwalin said slowly, turning instinctively toward where he’d heard her should. “Nine and three-quarters…nine and seven-eighths…nearly ten…just about ten…are you situated, then? I’m about to say ten. I mean it this time. D'you hear me? Just gone ten. Ten!”

 

Dwalin blinked once to adjust his eyes to the sunlight streaming down on him and when his vision cleared, Dís was nowhere to be seen.

 

He looked behind a likely-looking rock, but she wasn’t there. He peered around a tree stump, but she wasn’t there either. He even got his boots wet looking for her in the tangle of rushes that grew on the edge of a small pond, but Dís hadn’t chosen that for her hiding place either. 

 

Now, Dwalin didn’t panic. He wasn’t built for it and he didn’t see what good it would do, to get all worked up and twitchy when a body started to get nervous. Rather than fretting he just bellowed, “Right, you’ve won, come out then and mock me for my bad eyes.” 

Silence. Dwalin’s heartbeat picked up, just a bit, but he absolutely did  _not_  panic. He did not wring his hands, though his palms grew a tad sweaty, thinking of running back to the camp to explain himself. He did not shudder, but he did wince when he thought about what Missus Freya would say when she found out he deliberately took his eyes off her daughter; she’d likely decided he must not have much use for them. 

 “Dís!” he shouted. “Where are you?”

 

“Up here!" 

 

He heard her, but he still did not see her. Summer was full upon them and the leaves of the trees were full and green. 

 

” _Here!_ “ she called again and this time he looked up, shading his eyes and squinting. Ah. A well, chosen spot, scrambling up a tree. Her brown trousers were nearly the same shade as the bark. 

 

"Nicely done,” Dwalin acknowledged, pleased that he wasn’t going to have to face her mother’s wrath. “Come down, then.” 

“…I can’t,” she said, so quietly he asked her to repeat herself. “I’m stuck!”

Dwalin craned his neck all the way back and scoffed. It wasn’t as if she was wedged up there, she was just standing on one of the sturdy middle branches…though as he looked closer he saw that her fingers where white where they gripped the trunk. “Nonsense,” he said. “You got up, didn’t you? Getting down’s just the same, do exactly what you did before only backwards.”

“…I don’t remember what I did. Can you come get me?”

 Dwalin’s back twinged just thinking of it - not the climb so much as the inevitable  _fall._  He was well aware that fully half the reason he was being kept back wasn’t out of concern for his health, but because his father thought he was a mite too clumsy for his own good. More than a mite, actually. He’d given him quite the tongue-lashing about his recklessness, his carelessness, his other-thingslessness on the day it happened. Stung, aye, to get such a dressing down, but he knew it was done out of caring. Still, didn’t bode well for his future as a warrior if his Da thought he was such an oaf that he couldn’t be trusted to walk from one end of the camp to the other without a minder. 

“Please?” Dís asked hopefully. 

Dwalin swore quietly under his breath, then heaved a sigh and took hold of one of the lower branches. “You owe me,” he said, then gave a very undignified yelp as the branch he’d grabbed snapped off in his hand. It was all well and good for skinny little lassies of fewer than thirty years to go climbing trees, but he was a good deal bigger and far heavier than she was. 

“Are you alright?” Dís asked, peering down at him. Then she had the audacity to giggle at him. “You squalled like Nori just then.”

“A little less cheek, eh?” he requested, testing his weight on a sturdier branch. “Let’s not forget that I could hop back down and leave you up here.”

She didn’t even have to call his bluff. Of course he wouldn’t leave her stranded up a tree like a forgotten sparrow. He loved her too well and had too much care for his own well-being (whatever his father might say) to be so callous. Dwalin continued his plodding way up until he was just high enough that she could climb easily into his arms.

“There we are,” he said, holding out a hand for her to take. Dís tentatively stretched out her fingers, but seemed to think better of it and clung once more to the rough bark. 

Against his better judgment, Dwalin got a bit higher up, holding on to a branch that wasn’t as thick around as he’d prefer with his left hand and reaching for her with his right. They were nearly nose to nose and he smiled at her. “Come along, I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe with me.”

Dís licked her lips and glanced over at him. She nibbled her lower lip once, then took in a resolved breath. Mustering up all her nerve she let go of the trunk and wrapped both arms tightly round his neck, clinging to him for all she was worth. 

The lassie wasn’t wrong when she said it was tougher going down than it was getting up. It was doubly difficult with a scared dwarfling cutting off one’s air supply, but Dwalin managed it, jumping the last few feet down and jostling Dís to urge her to lift her head from his shoulder and see they were safe and sound. 

“Oh, well done!” she chirruped brightly. Her choking hold tightened again as she gave Dwalin a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. “You rescued me!”

“Let’s keep that between ourselves, eh?” he asked when she’d loosened her grip enough that he could talk. “That’s a good lass.”

“Why?” she asked, but before Dwalin could answer, there was shout for them from beyond the tree line.

“Food’s on!” Thorin called, jogging out to meet them. “Hungry? I don’t see why you would be as you two have been playing all day, but - ”

“I could eat,” Dwalin said, setting Dís down so that she could run off to her brother. Her feet weren’t long on the ground before Thorin scooped her up and let her ride on his back. 

“Did you have fun?” he asked his sister and Dís started to nod before she thought better of it and shook her head. 

“No,” she said immediately, giving Dwalin a brief smile as if to say,  _Don’t worry, I’ll handle this._  "It was very boring and Dwalin was very stern and he didn’t have to save me from…erm. We just sat.“

"Sat,” Thorin repeated, looking between the two of them with a small, knowing smile growing on his face.

“Aye,” Dwalin said, ignoring him. “Boots on the ground.”

Thorin reached up and plucked a twig out of Dwalin’s hair. “Ah, sure you did,” he said, smirking. “Well, maybe you do deserve a spot of dinner after all.”


	40. Discretion (Oin/Irpa)

If there was one thing that Óin understood, it was discretion. 

 

In his profession, it was vital. He could hardly treat a patient if they weren’t honest about how they came by their open wound, chaffed sores, or poxy infections in unusual places. It was a difficult thing, to inspire confidence. He didn’t have his cousin Balin’s open face or sincere-seeming eyes (Óin wasn’t fooled by him for a minute; he’d known the lad since the day he’d come into the world and once a sneak, always a sneak). He couldn’t cajole as much as he could demand, with an impatient note in his voice and a weary insistence that they, “Come out with it, it’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”

 

That was why discretion was important. 

Óin obtained trust reluctantly and he wasn’t about to unravel the whole thing just because a pair of hazel eyes with lashes like copper wires was trying to tease a bit of gossip out of him in the quiet of a late afternoon sunset. 

 

“Don’t know how you stand it,” he said, squinting against the glare of the late day sun. “How’re you supposed to get any work done in this light?”

 

“You call this  _work_?” Irpa asked, raising an eyebrow. The sheets slipped off her shoulder and the light glowed on the golden hair that lay sparsely over her chest, thickening down her belly. She looked like a statue, warm and lovely. “I don’t know whether I ought to be flattered or not.”

 

 

“Flattered," Óin said decidedly. He half-smiled at her behind a beard that had come all undone for being pulled and tugged - work indeed, she’d given him quite a job to get it all bound up again. "You’re keen on flattery, always have been. And poetry, I think I recall.”

 

“Mmm,” she nodded dreamily, eyes glazing over slightly. Doubtless she remembered happier times, listening to the flow of silvery water over intricate mosaics meld with the sound of a dozen handsome suitors’ voices singing low or reading to her from some gilt-edged book of odes and love songs. “Is that an offer?”

 

“For internal use,” he quoted. “Drink the first potion by the beaker twice a day; in the morning at sunrise and by the light of the evening star. The treatment lasts until the moon completes its orbit and after the space of a month conjoins again with the sun.”

 

“How beautiful,” she rolled her eyes and lay down with her head on 

Óin’s chest, twisting her fingers in his unbound beard. “What’s that, then, a gout cure?”

 

“The Great Pox,” he clarified and she laughed, loud and merry. 

Óin was very fond of Irpa’s laugh, it was a pure sort of sound. Never hastily quieted or tainted with bitterness just at the end. A laugh that he might have heard in Erebor, long ago. When they were very young and she had her pick of young troubadours, not thinking of settling on a grumpy old healer. 

 

“Well, I did ask for a love poem,” she sighed, closing her eyes. “It’s hardly my fault if you haven’t ever had a romantic thought in your head.”

 

“Hardly is at that," 

Óin said. He wasn’t romantic, not as some were. But not quite craft-wed either. Not in all things.

 

Irpa shifted, her toes lightly brushing the soft skin inside his ankle. 

Óin shifted and she looked up, eyes sparkling. "Don’t tell me, he’s ticklish?”

 

“He isn’t," Óin said warningly, keeping his feet well away from her mischievous toes. Irpa smiled at him, but her feet behaved themselves and her arm draped over his chest - he could not tell if the fingers that ghosted over his side were simply there by happenstance or she was trying to see if every bit of him was as sensitive as his feet, but she was due to be disappointed. 

 

"Killjoy,” she yawned, arching her back like a lazy cat. Those long, light eyelashes settled on her high cheeks and 

Óin wasted a few minutes in looking at her. She was a bonny girl, to be sure. And the orange light set her hair ablaze most fetchingly. Mannish homes might squeak and creak more than he liked, but there was something to be said for aboveground living, he supposed. 

 

The thin walls of the wooden house were also very useful for his purposes. 

 

“Come along now!” he heard Irpa’s eldest son above the din of the crowd, approaching the house. “Don’t drag your feet and keep a tight hold on those parcels, I won’t go back and buy more flour because you’ve dropped everything in the mud!”

 

Irpa sighed and Óin groaned. He rolled out of bed and into his trousers, she set about fluffing the pillows and drawing the blankets up, tucking the edges tight and prim. 

 

“I don’t suppose I’ve time to put the kettle on,” she said as she dropped a tunic over her head -  _his_  tunic. She smiled again and whipped it off, tossing it at Óin’s head.

 

“No, but I can go out the back - ach! Lass, come away from the window, ‘less you plan on charging for the sight.”

 

Irpa laughed her cheery laugh again, “Anything for a bit of extra coin! Oh, don’t look like that, you aren’t a bit shocked. You know, sometimes you can be as bad as that brother of yours for propriety.”

 

“Hmph," Óin grunted. He was not about to argue the point; there wasn’t time. "If anyone asks, you had a headache you needed a tonic for.”

 

“Ah, very well,” Irpa replied. “Just as well that you mentioned it, I was going to say I had a tickle in my throat that wanted working out.”

 

She was a saucy lass, no doubt about that. Óin couldn’t stop himself smiling at her and shaking his head; he most certainly was  _not_  as priggish as his younger brother, not by a mile. 

 

“Go on then,” she said, giving him a smack on the bum and a kiss on the mouth. “Before the lads are home and start worrying about their poor sickly amad.”

 

“As you say,” he said, picking up his boots and his medical bag, creeping silently down the stairs. He reached the back door just as he heard the hinges swing open on the front.

 

Aye, Óin understood about discretion.


	41. Home (Kili)

Sometimes Kíli thought he must be a hypocrite. 

 

 It was only that he’d never thought of Erebor as his  _home._  Home was in the Ered Luin. Home was his family’s three-room flat with the worn-through carpets and the blackened stains of suppers gone wrong that could never quite be scrubbed out of the hearth. Home was Mister Balin’s schoolroom where he took greater pleasure in chatting with friends than in learning his lessons (though Mister Balin wouldn’t let him leave unless he was convinced he’d learned  _one_  thing before day’s end). Home was the forge, crammed with his kin, barely room enough for three grown dwarves to move and work, let alone five. His apprentice had as much to do with remembering to avoid getting jabbed by an elbow or brained by a hammer on the up-swing as it did forging, carving, and filing. Home was the grassy knoll behind the shops where he’d spend countless hours getting into (and occasionally out of) scrapes with his friends, trotting down to the river for a swim, climbing the surrounding trees in pursuit of the reddest, shiniest apples, running down to the bakery for a midday treat hot out of the ovens.

 

What was Erebor? To K íli it might as well have been a setting of a fairy story, for how could he imagine gold-inlaid walls of marble when he was so accustomed to white-washed plaster? It stretched his mind to the limits picturing gem-encrusted floors and tiled ceilings whose colors glowed in the firelight, never having been touched by the sun. Daylight crept across the floor of his bedroom daily, shining in his eyes and waking him on those mornings that he did not rise in time to see the sun shining over the Mountains for himself.

 

He loved the Ered Luin, its packed dirt roads and above-ground dwellings. To be sure, it might be grand to live burrowed deep in the earth, surrounded by the rock, but as it was, he couldn’t see that he was missing much. 

 

He wasn’t, but his family was. How many times had Uncle Thorin made a circuit of the sitting room, wearing the rock with the soles of his restless boots, like he was trapped? He might’ve gone outside for a breath of fresh air, but he didn’t want this place, with its open skies and green grass. Even his mother, who lived most of her life aboveground would sometimes stop and sigh and he knew it wasn’t their sagging furniture she was seeing, but another time and place. 

Sometimes Kíli wondered if Fíli felt as he did, but he didn’t ask; didn’t want to start a row if he didn’t or worse, if he _did_. They neither of them talked of the Ered Luin as their home. Just as the place where they lived, for now. As if any day they might pack their things and go East. It was an eventuality that they were meant to anticipate eagerly, but to Kíli, talking of the day when Erebor would be reclaimed felt rote, hollow, almost. Their prayers ended with, “When Durin wakes again from sleep,” and that was how he felt about the phrase, “When Erebor is ours again.” He longed for that day, sure, but deep inside and with the feeling that it mightn’t happen in his lifetime. That it mightn’t happen at all, before all the world fell away. 

 So Kíli rarely talked of home at all. But he made the most of this place where he lived. He asked his mother and uncle and cousins for stories of their homeland, hoping that one day he too would think of Erebor as  _his_. Maybe it was their wistful tones, their far-away eyes, how the thought could take them from teary to laughing quick as winking, but the place never felt much nearer to his heart, no matter how many stories he heard. 

 

And so Kíli felt like a hypocrite. For his leaden heart as he watched Mam and Uncle sell off their furniture, their cooking things, and finally gave up the flat. For the dread that coiled in his belly when he said good-bye to his friends, promising to write, to greet them when he was  _home._  Oh, aye, he was thrilled to see the world, to be going on an adventure. But it was home he was leaving behind.


	42. Jelly (Disa&Thror kid!fic)

The kennels were almost as fun as the stables.

 _Almost_ , because one could ride the ponies in the stables, but Dísa was not allowed to ride any of the hunting dogs and she’d tried loads of times. Dísa couldn’t see why she wasn’t allowed, they were big enough; the dogs had been brought when the Mountain was first being settled, to go and search the hills if any of the scouts were lost. Now they were used for hunting and ostensibly for guarding, but Mistress Hilsíf, who looked after them, said they’d just as soon slobber a would-be robber to death than anything.

One of the bitches just had a litter of pups and just as soon as Dísa got herself kicked out of her lessons for being a nuisance, she went straight aboveground to visit them. There were eight, fat, squirmy things that had only started opening their eyes a few weeks ago and stumbling around their mother like squat, hairy drunkards. Now they were a bit bigger and more lively; they’d run right up to Dísa when she crouched by the edge of her pen, balancing on their hind legs and wagging their stubby tails.

She gave them all pats on the head and scratches behind the ears, letting them lick her fingers and nip at her knuckles. One very insistent pup, with a big black patch over his eye, kept coming back for more pats and, when Dísa was quite sure no one was looking, she lifted him right up into her arms and let him lick her nose. She sneezed and the noise attracted Mistress Hilsíf.

“Awfully young to be an apprentice, aren’t you, milady?” she asked, standing over her with her hands on her hips. “What’ve you done this time?”

“Nothing!” Dísa cried, hugging the pup tighter too her. He took that as his cue to snuggle with his head on her shoulder and settle in for a nap. “That’s just it, we were doing the succession from Father Durin and I got stuck all the way back in Khazad-dum. I couldn’t remember anyone between Durin VI and Thorin I, only that I thought his common name must’ve ended in -in since they always do and Master Skalri got all cross and said I was cheeky and ordered me out. Thrór laughed.”

“Hmm,” Mistress Hilsíf hummed, a thousand unspoken thoughts in that little sound, but Dísa did not hear them, absorbed as she was in attempting to make the pup open his tired eyes and do a trick for her. “Not just yet, m'dear. He’s a wee bit too little still for that - why he still needs to stay alongside his mother for the time being.”

“I don’t think she’ll miss him,” Dísa said, patting his head since he wasn’t going to do anything but nibble on the hem of her tunic. He didn’t even try to tug-o-war it from her when she pulled it away from his mouth. “She’s got others.”

“Tush,” Mistress Hilsíf cluckled her tongue. “All mothers care for their little ones just the same.”

This time it was Dísa’s turn to hum, only hers came out more like a snort. She was sure there would be rows tonight, with Ama shrilly scolding her for giving backtalk while Da nodded and frowned behind her like the angriest marionette at a faire. And Gróin would stand close enough for Dísa to see him, but far enough back that their parents wouldn’t hear him muffling his laughter into his sleeve.

“Not her - not for him, I mean. Come along, how’s he to bait a bear? He’s too soft and roly-poly.”

Mistress Hilsíf smiled like she knew a secret, “There’s no telling how a body will turn out when it’s this small. Why he might be the fiercest hunter the Mountain’s ever known!”

The pup yawned, exposing his pink tongue and tiny teeth that pricked like needles, but didn’t break the skin. Dísa favored the kennel master with a skeptical look. “Aye. And I’ll be a great scholar who writes long books and smells of dust and ink.”

“You never know,” Mistress Hilsíf shrugged. “You and he may surprise us.”

“I don’t like surprises,” Dísa declared, standing up and dusting dog hair off her trousers. “I like to know what’s what. May I come back and visit the dogs again tomorrow?”

“If you’ve time,” she nodded. “After your lessons.”

“I’ll have time,” Dísa predicted grimly. “Just you wait - I told you, I’m not one for surprises.”

Perhaps Mistress Hilsíf had more faith in Dísa than Dísa had in herself, or perhaps she was busy and forgot, but she wasn’t in her usual place in the kennels. Apart from a few apprentices cleaning out crates and stalls, the place was nearly deserted.

Her little fat friend with the patch came skipping toward her (wobbling, really, like a jelly). Dísa picked him up and he sniffed around in her pockets which once contained a bacon sandwich pilfered from breakfast, but she’d eaten it already - that was how she’d gotten herself booted out of the schoolroom. This time, she thought Master Skalri had _really_ gone round the bend. She wasn’t munching on nuts, so she wasn’t making noise. She was just hungry - growing dwarrowlasses needed food, didn’t they?

But then he looked her up and down and said that she didn’t seem in danger of going hungry and everyone giggled - they stopped when she turned round and glared at them though. She was the biggest one in their classroom, after all, Master Skalri hadn’t been wrong about the fact that she was fed up well enough. Still, he didn’t have to say it like it was an insult.

Today she’d kicked herself out and shoved past her master to get out the door. He’d called after her to stop, but she started running, barreling through the crowds and going up and up until she was outside, squinting in the sunshine. She doubted her Master would follow her there; he didn’t look as if he’d seen the sun since his last Name Day.

“Stupid genealogies, stupid literature, _stupid_ Elvish,” she whispered into the pup’s ear. “And _stupidest_ Common Speech. And 'stupidest’ isn’t right anyway - it’s 'most stupid.’ Like me. I don’t care. I’m going to be a warrior when I grow up, did you know? I’ll be the best there is and I won’t need to read and write for that. My axes’ll talk for me and that’s enough. Isn’t it?”

The pup licked her chin.

“Thanks,” she said, hefting him into her arms and kissing his head. He was soft and warm, even if he was useless, Dísa liked him. She looked at his brothers and sisters, running around, snarling at each other, getting into fights over worn out balls and lengths of rope. She admired their spirit, but the second she returned their friendly sibling to them, he lay his head down on his forepaws. Poor little misfit; he’d never stand a chance against a bear.

The mother wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Maybe she was being exercised after giving up so much of her time and energy nursing her little ones. Dísa hoped she was having a good time; she knew she’d be running mad if it was her stuck in a box getting pawed at for weeks on end. She wondered how she could possibly keep track of them all, or tell them apart, the little pups tearing at each other. She wondered if she’d notice that one of the lot was missing.

Probably not, Dísa reflected. Not with him being such a quiet, complacent little thing. Probably no one would miss him. Probably no one would ever remember there had been eight pups instead of seven.

 _Anyway,_ she thought as she reached down into the caged off place where the pups were playing and scooped up her little friend, _he needs a different place to live. He’s not useful to anyone down here._

* * *

 

“I love him,” Thrór declared passionately, hoisting the pup into his arms and snuggling him close, despite the little one’s whimpers of protest. “I love him already, though I just met him. What’s he called?”

“Nothing at all, if you don’t drop him,” Dísa scolded him. “Not if you hug the stuffing out of him.”

Thrór dropped the pup immediately. He flopped on the floor, then scurried away, hiding under a sitting room table. “Sorry. But what’s he called?”

“Dunno,” Dísa shrugged. “Good-for-nothing - he won’t even snap at his brothers and sisters, he’ll be a miserable hunting dog. That’s why I saved him.”

‘Saved’ might have been overstating the matter. She’d absconded with the pup from the kennels because he was a friendly little thing who’d taken a shine to her. And she assumed he’d be better off being petted in her home than failing to measure up to the standards of Erebor’s kennelmasters. It would be embarrassing for him.

Thrór tutted and trotted over to the table where the pup was hiding. “Tush. He’s not a good-for-nothing! That’s not nice. Not nice to call, him, I mean. Come here, you, come out, I promise I won’t squeeze you.”

“He doesn’t trust you,” Dísa declared haughtily, crossing her arms over her chest. The pup made a liar of her by tentatively poking his head out and giving Thrór’s hand a lick.

“Aww, there’s a lad,” Thrór smiled approvingly. “Hmm. What about Cuddles?”

“Eurgh! No!” Dísa exclaimed, screwing her face up. “Nah, he’s already to squashy and sweet, he needs a fiercer name. Like….like…Terror. Then folks’ll know him by his reputation and be too scared to fight him, so he won’t have to worry about actually terrorizing anyone.”

“That makes sense,” Thrór agreed. Then the pup rolled over and let Thrór rub his belly. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and he closed his eyes in evident satisfaction. “Awww…no, it won’t work. He’s too dear. What about Dearie?”

“EURGH,” Dísa repeated, loudly, for emphasis. She flopped down on the floor beside Thrór and buried her face in the carpet. “NO! That’s awful. If we’re going to give him a name that sums up what he truly is, we ought to call him Sleepy for all he does is sleep. And eat. He wobbles when he walks. Like a jelly.”

“Jelly!” Thrór shouted, startling Dísa and the pup. “We’ll call him Jelly! I like it, it’s what he’s like, and it’s not cruel. What do you think, Jelly? Like it?”

The pup, seemingly energized by Thrór’s voice, stood up and yipped, wagging his tail enthusiastically.

“Jelly’s not bad,” Dísa said, turning it over in her mind. Jelly. It was the best of the lot, so far.

“You’re so lucky,” Thrór sighed, watching Jelly bound away to gnaw on a table leg. “My parents’d never let me have a dog.”

“Well, neither have mine,” Dísa shrugged. “I never asked them.”

“What?!” Thrór’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Really?”

“I thought they’d say no,” she explained. “So I just did it anyway. Got him anyway. No one’ll miss him, I told you, he’s useless. ‘Least here he’ll have friends.”

“But what if they don’t let you keep him?” Thrór asked worriedly. “What if they make you take him back? What if he misses us?”

Dísa smiled. No need to think about that, she was about to explain. She had a plan. The pan consisted of hiding the pup from her parents for…oh, a week, mayhap more. During which time she’d feed the dog and exercise him. She knew a lot about caring for dogs from hanging about the kennels. If they didn’t notice him, then surely they’d let her keep him, seeing how responsible she was, how little trouble Jelly was. It was a perfect plan. It would set his mind at ease to hear it.

Unfortunately for Dísa, he never would. Just as Jelly made free to relieve himself all over the floor beside the table, the door of her family’s suite opened and her little brother Gróin walked in just in time to see the mess and witness his sister and the heir to the throne scrambling away from the spreading dark stain.

“I’m telling!”


	43. Going (Dis&Dwalin pre-Quest)

“I’m going.”

Dwalin didn’t turn round - hadn’t even risen when she burst in on him, which was how she knew for certain that he knew it was her pounding down the stairs to his flat. Which was why she’d stated her business, plain as day. Which was why she hadn’t clarified what that business was.

“Thought as much,” Dwalin said, nodding slowly. He turned then, just shifting around in his chair to look at her. His weapons were laid out on the kitchen table before him, a flask of oil beside him and a whetstone in his hand. The firelight reflected in his dark eyes and she swallowed hard. None of that. Not now.

“Did you?” she asked, her voice taking on a rough, bitter note that she didn’t like hearing. It made her sound like her mother. It made her sound like Thorin. “Well. You might’ve asked, mightn’t you?”

“Was there a point in asking?” Dwalin replied, draping an arm over the back of his chair. He was looking up at her beneath his eyebrows, his voice and expression almost sarcastic. Dís didn’t much like his tone of voice or his expression at the moment and she marched up to him, arms folded tightly across her chest.

“When you contract my sons out before you approach me, aye, there’s a point,” she glared. “I suppose lads of eighty are better suited to rough living and roadside dangers than ‘dams of a hundred and sixty?”  
Dwalin lowered his eyes and dropped his whetstone. “Of course not.”

"Well?”

The look she didn’t much like was back. “Do you want me to tell you exactly why you weren’t asked? Because we both of us know - “

“And both of you ought to think better of me!” she cried, exasperated. “Do you and Thorin honestly believe I’d sit here, braiding my beard, while the lot of you run off into the wilds? That I’d write letters, like Irpa? ‘Make certain you’re eating enough and you’re warm enough and send me your socks by raven to darn and keep busy - oh, and please come get me when your business is done.’ Is that what you think of me?”  
  
“The day I think you’ll darn my socks - ” Dwalin began, but stopped when he saw that her fury was sincere.  
  
She could have hit him, but only just managed to restrain herself. The brutality of her rage was best saved for Thorin, she was sure he’d been the one to insist she stay behind. Out of danger, out of the way, though it meant one less set of hands for an already unpopular venture, though it meant setting out with thirteen, a bad luck number if she’d ever heard it. He gave so much thought to protecting her that he never thought of protecting himself.  
  
"Well?” she demanded, after Dwalin’s pause lapsed into a longer silence.  
  
He rose, setting a hand on her shoulder briefly to push her out of the way. There wasn’t much space to cross, but the two-room flat he shared with his brother was fairly well cluttered after almost a century in the West. A century; the thought sat as uneasy with her as it did with Thorin. And how dare he try to keep her away?  
  
“There you are,” Dwalin said, laying the contract out on the table, weighting both ends so she could read it, unfolding an addendum that had been glued on in some haste, it seemed. Not Ori’s finest moment, she had to admit, for she’d seen her sons’ copies, after all. That was why she was here. “I’d offer to fetch Balin to read it to you, but we thought you’d sign it without going over the particulars.”  
  
“We?” Dís asked, furrowing her brow. “Who’s we? You and Balin? Nevermind, get me a pen.”  
  
Dwalin did just that, watched her sign her name in impassive silence, added his own mark as witness, though neither of them read a word of the contract, copied out in the Common Tongue, a language Dís spoke, but did not read. It didn’t matter. She wanted one thing and one thing only: to be with her family. All the rest was so much tin.  
  
“Me and Thorin,” he said shortly, once he’d straightened up. “Come, lass. You know him better than that, to think he’d expect you to stay behind.”  
  
“Then why - ”  
  
“He ordered a contract drawn up for you,” Dwalin continued, looking somewhere over her shoulder. “And told Balin to hang on to it. Told me he expected you to sign it; he just didn’t want to see it.”  
  
Ah. Of course. For that was Thorin, at his worst. To know with certainty that all his fears were come to pass, but not to witness them with his own eyes. Her brother did not like company with his misery; he preferred to eat his heart out alone.  
  
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Dwalin suggested casually, “let him go on thinking you’re cross because he wanted you left behind. He said he’d rather that than for you to know him for a coward.”  
  
“He’s not - “  
  
Dwalin put a finger to her lips and tilted her chin up. “I know that. You know that. But it hasn’t mattered much, has it?”


	44. Substitute (Dwalin/Hobbit OFC, pre-Quest)

Dwalin’s appearance and reputation were useful in achieving what he wanted. It came of being something of a legend among his own people, despite the fact that he was not so very old by their reckoning. Most dwarrows were inclined to follow his orders and fill his requests in matters of war and politics without question. Men saw the strength of him at once and were generally disinclined to haggle with him at the smithy without him saying a word about it or even running the pad of his thumb over the sharp blade of an axe or knife.

Such tactics did not work, he discovered, when trying to hail a serving maid in a halfling inn.

He was a full day’s journey from his destination, but it seemed that Hobbits were spread out far and wide in this little corner of the earth. Despite all the sights he’d seen in his day, they were a seldom-glimpsed people outside their own land. They favored bright colors in their dress, he spotted that straight away, and small, thick figures more given to fleshiness than his own people, but not displeasing to look on. Not like the waifish, ephemeral slenderness of Elves, to be sure.

Balin wouldn’t have been a bad fellow to have along, Dwalin reflected as he was yet again skirted around by the serving staff, their eyes glanced up at his axes and then stopped. He had to stop himself from visibly glowering; he would have been more than happy to lay them by, only there was no place to put them. There were pegs for traveling cloaks, but nary a shelf nor hook for heavy weaponry.

Not that Dwalin had any intention of totally disarming; that would be ten different kinds of daft. Even in a village populated almost entirely by fat, bare-chinned beings who stood no higher than his own waist, there was no reason to take chances. At the outset of such a journey as they were to make, it wasn’t wise to get sloppy from the get-go.

Balin wasn’t sloppy but he had a pleasantness about him that Dwalin never mastered. A bland kindness and a shallow friendliness, the result of many years of practice and a natural intuition when it came to diffusing tense situations. Dwalin had a tendency to cause tension, but alas and alack, his brother was forced to remain behind in the Ered Luin to settle up matters with the royal council and Dwalin went on without him.

His haste in departure was not his own doing. He’d have stayed on longer, gone to the meeting of the Seven Kingdoms with Dís and Thorin, but for the fact that the lass begged a favor of him and he had a hard time saying no when she made requests of him directly.

 _Keep an eye on the lads, won’t you?_ she asked. _Don’t tread on their heels, but…make sure they don’t do anything too foolish._

And so he’d gone in pursuit of Fíli and Kíli. By his own standards he’d been damn discreet, following in their wake, not alerting them to his presence, but he managed to somehow overtake them that day. It was yet another reason why he’d decided to stop at the inn; best to wait and make sure the boys hadn’t gotten themselves lost before the journey was actually begun.

Hunger made him ornery and his thoughts turned uncharitable when he thought on his young cousins. Between them they had about a brain and a half, but both had inherited their Da’s charm and easy manner. Probably fended for themselves just fine, certainly they would’ve been served by now if they had been first to this Hobbit land.

Maybe Dís had it the wrong way round; the lads probably ought to have taken it upon themselves to look after him.

Mood sullied, he was about to give the place up as a loss when a swish of skirts and a chirruped, “Good evening, Master Dwarf, what’s your pleasure?” made him settle back upon his chair with an audible thump.

There was no reason this particular halfling should have caught his eye more than any other. There was no reason he ought to have felt anything but relief that he was about to get himself some food and drink.

She was small and her face hairless, her form generously round without the hint of hard muscle beneath soft curves. Her voice was pitched higher than most dwarrowdams, like the plinking of pebbles in a stream rather than the richer grind of gristmill stones. Utterly foreign. But there was something familiar about her blue eyes, sparkling with mischief, and her sun-browned face. Her head was crowned with glossy black curls that fell down over her shoulders like a river on a moonless night, shot through here and there with grey strands, like silver wire.

She was tiny, she was soft, she was a stranger. But Dwalin looked at her and his mind conjured forth another face with harder lines, longer planes, a dark mourning beard, and he found he’d momentarily lost his voice.

When he didn’t answer, she smiled at him and arched an eyebrow before she went on, “House special’s partridge, two for the meal, but I could see my way to making it three - ”

“Four,” he said, more gruffly than he meant to, but the little ‘dam didn’t quake or blanch or even step back. On the contrary, her smile widened, got sharper and her eyes sparkled.

“Four it’ll be,” she nodded, then asked, “Double potatoes as well? Should I bother asking if you want greens or just leave it at that?”

“Leave it at that,” Dwalin replied, a slow smile spreading on his face, half-hidden by his beard. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“Imagine that,” she replied with a sauciness that he found put him at ease rather than put him on his guard. “A dwarf who doesn’t want to cause trouble! I always thought that’d be the day that fish fly and cats swim.”

“Better start fishing for cats, then,” Dwalin said she laughed, a hearty sound that contained just a bit of a rasp which indicated an affinity for strong pipeweed.

It was that laugh that had Dwalin eyeing her as she made her way back to the kitchen (though the rest of the pub probably thought it was the sway of her ample hips, which wouldn’t be entirely untrue). Sometime - he wasn’t sure when - Dís’s giggling gave way to a rougher sound that sent his guts churning something awful. He heard an echo of it in that barmaid’s voice and forced his eyes away, staring into the flames of the fire, lost in thought until she was back, placing a tankard at his elbow.

“I have to ask,” she said, leaning against the tabletop, twirling a rag between her small, nimble fingers, “what cause a dwarf has to come so far West. Are you - ” her voice dropped to a whisper - “on the run?”

Dwalin couldn’t help smiling at her again, slyly, with half his mouth. “If I was, do you think I’d have sat here so long, waiting for meat and grog? I’d have helped myself to the chickens in yon garden there.”

“You’d be welcome to them,” the maid shot a glare through the wall, presumably at the chickens. “They eat us out of house and home and half of them won’t lay unless the sky’s blue, the sun shines and the breeze is westerly.”

“So why aren’t you serving chicken?”

“Because we can charge more for partridge,” she winked. “And I didn’t mean running from the law… some take it upon themselves to run from responsibility. A shrewish wife, maybe.”

Dwalin drew up at once, unable to disguise his instinctive horror at the suggestion that if he were married that he’d ever abandon his spouse. “Reckon I’m Mannish, do you?”

“Big enough to be,” the halfling woman continued in her teasing way, but she stopped leaning upon the table, recognizing that she’d caused offense, however unintended. “No wife, then?”

“No,” Dwalin said shortly, then polished off his ale in a few swallows and placed the empty mug upon the tabletop, an obvious cue for her to go away and return with a fresh one.

She didn’t miss a beat, picking up the mug and scuttling off to the kegs that stood behind the bar, leaving Dwalin alone with thoughts that turned more and more sour by the minute.

Married. Him. What a thought. Most reckoned he was well wed to his craft or, at least, to his duty to his king. To be fair, he practically was. Where ever Thorin went, so he would go. And so she would go. Nearly as good as being married in fact.

No, it wasn’t. Dwalin was an awful liar, he couldn’t even delude himself. All those years behind him and what did he have to show for it? The memory of a rotten kiss by a clothesline, the smash of teeth, and the wetness of tears. Nothing like a marriage.

The ale and the lassie were back and she’d lost none of her boldness in the meantime, though now when she addressed him, she looked at the metal on his hands and not into his eyes. “I thought your people traveled in pairs or more. Are you all alone, then?”

He ought to have told her to fuck off until she brought his meal, but he could hear the ghost of his mother hissing his ear as soon as the words formed in his mind and could practically feel the whoosh of wind that precipitated a sharp smacking by one of his father’s hands. He’d been raised better than that and the lass was curious, not cruel.

“I’ve business in this part of the world,” he said shortly. “My kinfolk will be along in a day.”

“We’re to be descended upon by dwarves, then?” she asked, a smile curving her bow-like mouth. “That’ll be a treat, if you all insist on double portions of supper.”

“Our business won’t be long in the doing,” he shrugged. “I’d not count on it.”

“This is one night’s pleasure, then?” she asked raising her eyes again. There was a question in them, different from the one she’d put to him. Dwalin rocked back on the legs of his chair, eyebrows jumping up for just a second before he held them still.

Well, now. Wasn’t that something?

“Seems like,” he said slowly. “Pleasure, is it?”

“I hope so,” she said, bold as brass, with those frank eyes and that wild hair. Wouldn’t be like the real thing, but he was used to not getting exactly what he wanted. Didn’t mean he had to suffer total deprivation, he wasn’t one for martyring himself.

“Well, then,” Dwalin smiled again. “Why not? First, supper.”

Her eyes sparkled and she laughed again, “Of course supper! My, my, to think…without _supper_ …”

She muttered in a bemused way to herself all the way back to the kitchens, but was smiling again when she laid the table. And he was treated to that laugh of hers sometimes later. He found out her name was Daphne and she lived with her sister and a truly unfathomable number of nieces and nephews. She’d been working at the inn since her husband died, twenty years before. She hadn’t any children of her own. She was a gardener and a baker, her hands smelled of strawberries.

It was nothing like the real thing, of course. But it wasn’t bad either. She didn’t ask for his name, he didn’t give it. She didn’t ask where he’d come from or where he was going to. She asked if he liked the partridge and what exactly it was he had written all over himself. He didn’t tell her. She didn’t ask again. He wasn’t asleep when she re-tied her apron strings. She didn’t bid him good-night, but she did wish him a safe journey.

He didn’t see her again when he left in the morning and he didn’t think of her that night when, late and lost, another lass with a particular laugh, a head of inky black waves, and sparkling sapphire eyes met his gaze and smiled.


End file.
